>2) Hard drive
>In order to protect the hard drive of a Windows PC avoiding a mishap, I
>disconnected its power cable. Could disable detecting hard disk from BIOS
>has the same effect. The latter arrangement is more convenient without
>opening the PC box.
>
Some BIOSes do look for a harddisk on primary master, even if you disable
it in the "Standard CMOS Options" - there
should be a menu option where you can disable the "Primary IDE Controller"
which would disable youd C-Drive and any
other Harddisk, that may be on the second IDE Port of the primary channel.
Most people have their CD-Roms on the
secondary channel and their harddisks on the primary one, so make sure you
have enough RAM to run Knoppix (which
I assume you have). If you disable the primary channel, NO HARDDISK ON
THAT CABLE WILL BE FOUND.
But Knoppix does NOT access your harddisk at all. Its totally running from
the memory - it puts a "RAM-Drive" there,
which is basically a "Software Harddisk" which resides in your system
memory. Only if you have less then 128
Megabytes of RAM it ASKS if it MAY create a "Swap File" if you have free
space on one of your harddisks. This file will
be called knoppix.swp. Allowing Knoppix to create a Swap File is totally
save: It is just like any other file on your FAT
Partition, and will not delete or move any other files. Windows does the
same thing - but all the time, and it does not ask
for permission ;)
But I understand you want to be sure, so disable the primary controller
and you will be save. But remember to turn it
back on, when you want to boot Windows instead ;)
I would even prefer disabling the controller over removing the power plug.
Each time you reconnect the plug there might
be static on your harddisk, which may damage the rest of your computer
This mail is NO OFFENSE and not meant as such. I was not sure which level
of knowledge on PC hardware you have,
so I tried to cover the basics as well.
Cheers
Sebastian
Germany