Computer has become an integral part of our lives due to its numerous uses in our day-to-day activities ranging from basic to higher levels of education, different courses on the computer system, achieving higher degrees in various academics, and various fields starting from NASA to Business-Commerce and others. The various applications of computers can be split into different domains such as:
Home – Online Bill Payment, Email Communication, Watching movies and shows across various platforms, Playing games and others.
Medical Field – Computers are used in hospitals and medical departments for maintaining Database of Patients on multiple entities. Doctors use advanced, robotic methods to operate on patients. Virtual reality technologies are also used to provide training to medical staff and students.
Entertainment – From video and sound engineering to implementing the latest ways in modern cinematography, Entertainment industry is very much dependent on the modern computer system.
Apart from all these, Computers have great utilities in other fields such as Education, Government, Banking, Science and Engineering and more.
What is Booting?
Before I explain what Booting is, let me explain what is an OS or Operating System. Computer is fundamentally divided into two parts – Hardware and Software. By their names only, we can understand that Hardware is that part of the computer system which is physically hard or tangible or those parts which we can touch and see. Right from the Cabinet containing the motherboard, power-supply unit, processor unit, hard-disk to Monitor, Printer, Scanner, etc, all fall under Hardware parts of the computer.
Software is just the opposite of Hardware. All the programs, set of instructions encoded in the chipsets and integrated circuits through which we communicate with the computer by rapid and random transferring of languages of humans and computers and vice-versa falls under Software which is again fundamentally divided into two types :
§ System Software
§ Application Software
System Software – It is a set of programs creating a base on which other application programs run and through these operations, we communicate with the computer and get our desired results. All Operating Systems fall under System Software as this is the fundamental software behind the whole functioning of the computer system.
In this article I will give emphasis on the System Software and the OS (Operating System) and how the computer boots or starts by loading pre-loaded programs and vast drivers intra-communicating with the hardware devices leaving off the application software part.
Booting generally means starting of the computer system when we turn-on the machine and the internal steps which occur right from
· Power on Self Test – Checking all the hardware devices attached to the computer system
· Checking the Basic Input Output System or BIOS and the configurations mentioned in it
· Checking the firmware and loading the Boot-loader containing OS information
· Loading the OS after visiting the Kernel section
The above three steps are just the basic steps and I will not explain the details as explaining them will take us far away from the point to understand the new way of Booting nowadays. So far we have understood what is booting and its relation with the BIOS and how an OS gets loaded and we start operating the computer.
Now, let us understand the differences between Booting through BIOS and UEFI –
Booting through BIOS - BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System and is essentially the software built in the motherboard which allows us to change certain settings like Time and Date, Power Schedule, Boot Order and more. BIOS was good enough but not up to the mark because it is graphically not too advanced and the booting sector is run by MBR or Master Boot Record containing all the bootable device information. The BIOS was actually the 16-bit software to die off and which got updated to 32 and 64-bit nowadays. BIOS is often referred to as Legacy BIOS or Legacy OpROM (Option ROM).
Booting through UEFI – UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and is technologically more advanced than the traditional BIOS system. It is graphically more advanced and helps in proper and full optimization of the disk space in space allocation and of those hard disks of more than 2 TB size. UEFI leads to greater control over hardware features such as fans and over-clocking and helps in loading the integrated hardware drivers pre-installed in modern computer systems. While UEFI is completely different from Legacy BIOS, it is often referred to as UEFI BIOS or simply BIOS in recent times in modern machines. Most motherboards support switching between Legacy and UEFI BIOS systems or a Mix of both.
UEFI comes with GPT or GUID Partition Table. GUID stands for Globally Unique Identifier. GPT leads to advanced booting with high end graphics acceleration and allows more than four partitions up to 4 zetta-bytes which does not happen in case of MBR, limited to only four partitions per drive. Legacy BIOS or MBR holds in case of an old drive with an old operating system such as Windows XP or 7. UEFI facilitates Secure Boot which is a way of preventing certain kinds of malware from getting loaded and thus compromising the OS. Therefore UEFI is more recommended for modern computer systems with latest Operating System versions starting from Windows 8 and more.
Well, whatever may be the latest system running now, We always have to keep ourselves updated with the technology with the modern machines and implement new ways in our lives surrounded by all parameters…
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