hunting for bios programmer

[solidcor]

Okay, so if anybody has thoughts/comments on the following solution (read: hack) I'm about to disclose, they would be appreciated.

We set the boot piority to:
1) sata-dom
2) sata dev-1 (storage 1)
3) sata dev-2 (storage 2)
and anything else connected is inserted after these.

Now, without boot flag/sector on the disk, the bios skips the disk and seeks the next bootable disk. SO, we set each of the storage drives as bootable with fdisk, and write the first 446 bytes to each of the disks with dd.

This way, if the bios doesn't see sata-dom (failure, etc) and looks to the next devices on the list, then it will see boot material, attempts to boot and fails (minimally tested).
Essentially 3 disks need to undetected/broken before it seeks for a disk that we dont *know will be there.

As long as the BIOS isn't really, really odd, and for some reason let's another disk/network/boot-media slip in that list to be before my three drives, this should work.

Thoughts?

 

[ssjwizard]

Just make sure USB booting, Boot from LAN, and Boot other devices are disabled aswell.

 

[OptyTrooper]

If you decide to go the new board route Asrock is known for hot-swappable SATA. Secondly the folks you need too get in touch with are:Rebels Haven if anyone can mod your BIOS they are the guys. Be warned they are notorious for being exclusionary and cantankerous.

 

[solidcor]

Alright, well thank you all.

One of the most helpful forums I've been on. Great community, I'll be sure to come back.

Thanks again.