Patent ID: 7134006

Claim:
An information handling system having media partitioned into different access levels by host BIOS code, the information handling system comprising: a host bus; a central processing unit coupled to the host bus; a host BIOS device having a host BIOS code that provides an interface with an operating system, other software applications, and hardware in the information handling system, the host BIOS code including an interrupt handler; mass storage device control logic communicatively coupled to the interrupt handler; and a mass storage device media coupled to and controlled by the mass storage device control logic, wherein a first portion of the mass storage device media is not directly accessible by the software other than the host BIOS code and a second portion of the mass storage device media is directly accessible by all software, at least one of the first and second portions being further partitioned to establish two or more areas of different accessibility levels for the software other than the host BIOS code, the host BIOS code creating said first portion of the mass storage device media which is not directly accessible by the software other than the host BIOS code, said first portion of the mass storage media being created with an internal password set by the host BIOS code.