Boot up sequence

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jake
  • Start date Start date
J

Jake

Which boot up sequence is recommended for an XP Home machine? Mine has been
set to read the primary HD first, I would've thought the CD drive would be
best as first.

Also, how do I enable S.M.A.R.T on my HD's? I have 2 Maxtor drives, 80Gb and
120Gb.

Many thanks.
 
Jake said:
Which boot up sequence is recommended for an XP Home machine? Mine
has been set to read the primary HD first, I would've thought the CD
drive would be best as first.
Click to expand...

The most convenient order is floppy, CD, HD
However said would also be most concenient to anyone (who had physical
access to the machine) who wanted to hack in to the machine via floppy or
CD.

Thus, it is question of convenience versus security, if you keep 'as is'
then you have best security as it would need an intruder to go to the BIOS
and rearrange the boot-order so that they could get on the machine via
floppy or CD. Also it is that 'security wise the BIOS can be locked with a
Password.
 
Jake said:
Which boot up sequence is recommended for an XP Home machine? Mine
has been set to read the primary HD first, I would've thought the CD
drive would be best as first.

Also, how do I enable S.M.A.R.T on my HD's? I have 2 Maxtor drives,
80Gb and 120Gb.
Click to expand...

S.M.A.R.T. is enabled/disabled from within the BIOS.

S.M.A.R.T. is 'often as not' disabled by default on many machines due to the
fact of HD's being somewhat more reliable these days.
However it might well be usefull to be warned of any possible problem from
the HD.
S.M.A.R.T. may be considered to err on the side of caution, thus perhaps
reporting an insignificant error.
 
"HDD Health is a full-featured failure-prediction agent..... Sitting in the
system tray, it monitors hard disks and alerts you to impending failure. The
program uses Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) built
into all new hard disks, and can predict failures on your hard drives. A
host of alerting features include email, local pop-up messages, net
messages, and event logging, while using no system resources."

http://www.panterasoft.com/

This freeware has become part of my basic tool kit. I let it run in the
background continuously.

Bee.
 
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