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Okay so a while back I broke my screen on my laptop, so I cannot access the BIOS because I cannot see it. I have a few external hard drives that I keep connected to my laptop always, but when I reboot I have to unplug them so my laptop doesn't try to boot them. I was wondering if there was a file that I could put at the root of the drives that I don't want booted so the BIOS just skips over them. Is this possible?

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You can do this by making the partitions inactive, so they can be accessed but can't be boot.

  1. Open up a command prompt and type DISKPART.
  2. Type LIST DISK
  3. Type SELECT DISK n (where n is the number of the drive)
  4. Type LIST PARTITION
  5. Type SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the partition)
  6. Type INACTIVE
  7. Type EXIT to exit DISKPART
  8. Type EXIT again to exit the command prompt
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okay when i try to select the partition, i type in the corresponding number and it only says "no partition was selected" the partition i am trying to select does have a asterisk next to it – sightofnick Feb 3 '11 at 19:43
@sightofnick: If it shows an asterisk then it is selected, weird that it does give an error though... – Tom Wijsman Feb 3 '11 at 19:45
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