ARMD-HDD

In computing, ARMD refers to the ATAPI Removable Media Device BIOS Specification [http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/EDD1AAA0-177E-4024-A0B1-E4BD06B673F7/0/specsatapi.pdf] . It is a standard orginally developed by Compaq Computer Corporation and Phoenix Technologies. It specifies provisions in the BIOS of a personal computer to allow the computer to be bootstrapped from various types of devices such as Zip drives, Jaz drives, SuperDisk (LS-120) drives, and similar devices.

These devices have removable media like floppy disk drives, but capacities more commensurate with hard drives, and programming requirements unlike either. Due to limitations in the floppy controller interface most of these devices were ATAPI devices, connected to one of the host computer's ATA interfaces, similarly to a hard drive or CD-ROM device. However, existing BIOS standards did not support these devices. An ARMD-compliant BIOS allowed these devices to booted from and used under the operating system.

A BIOS implementing ARMD allows the user to include ARMD devices in the boot search order. Usually an ARMD device is configured earlier in the boot order than the hard drive. Similarly to a floppy drive, if bootable media is present in the ARMD drive, the BIOS will boot from it; if not, the BIOS will continue in the search order, usually with the hard drive last.

There are two variants of ARMD, ARMD-FDD and ARMD-HDD. Originally ARMD caused the devices to appear as a sort of "very large floppy drive," either the primary floppy drive device 00h or the secondary device 01h. Some operating systems required code changes to support "floppy disks" with capacities far larger than any actual floppy drive. Also, floppy drive emulation proved to be unsuitable for certain devices such as Iomega Zip drives. Later the ARMD-HDD, ARMD-"Hard disk device", variant was developed to address these issues. Under ARMD-HDD, an ARMD device appears to the BIOS and the operating system as a hard drive.

ee also

* ATAPI

References