Patent · US Active

Method and apparatus for presenting drivers stored on utility partition of hard disk through virtual floppy to operating system installer

US7757072B2 · kind B2 · utility

0Cited by
5References
16Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateAug 22, 2006
Grant dateJul 13, 2010
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 27, 2028

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F8/60
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Installable device drivers may be stored on a partition, e.g., Utility Partition (UP) or other OEM partition, of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) storage device, e.g., hard disk drive, by associating an INT13h Basic Input-Output System (BIOS) interrupt call, e.g., reading from floppy disk drive a: or drive b: a desired storage device driver during the normal course of installing an operating system (OS), e.g., Microsoft Windows, Linux, BSD, Unix, etc., on the information handling system, e.g., personal computer, server, blade server, storage array, workstation, etc. The run-time loading of a raw floppy image having OS installable drivers residing in the Utility Partition or other hidden partition on the hard disk may be presented as a virtual floppy disk drive to the OS installer, e.g., person (manual) or scripted (automated) process.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.