Patent ID: 7281124

Claim:
A method, comprising: constructing a virtual drive from a physical storage device of a computer system during a pre-boot phase of the computer system, wherein constructing the virtual drive includes: retrieving a logical block address (LBA) range designated for the virtual drive; and assigning a portion of logical block addresses of the physical storage device to the virtual drive based on the LBA range; initializing a virtual drive controller during the pre-boot phase, the virtual drive controller to support the virtual drive; accessing information on the virtual drive using the virtual drive controller by firmware of the computer system during the pre-boot phase; and accessing the information on the virtual drive using the virtual drive controller by an operating system of the computer system during an operating system runtime phase, wherein the information is comprehensible by the firmware and the operating system and wherein the virtual drive is perceived by the firmware and the operating system as a separate drive from a device drive in the physical storage device.