Fixing cryptic case of H drive
Q: In the course of computer maintenance, I regularly use the drive optimizer on my Windows 10 computer. Today for the first time a drive showed up as an H drive along with my C and D drive. I have no idea what this drive is! Can you please educate me on the function of this drive?
A: Just about every Windows computer you will see has two primary drives. The C drive, which hosts the operating system, your applications and all of your personal files.
The other drive you see most often is the D drive, and this is usually the CD/DVD
ROM drive, though many modern computers are being sold without a DVD drive since they are not used as much for software installation or file storage.
After these two drives, the most common thing you will see are drive letters that refer to external storage devices. This includes external hard drives and USB flash drives, also known as thumb drives.
Check your USB ports. My guess is that you have an external or storage device attached. If you don’t see anything attached, it could be your printer.
Q: What is a System BIOS, and do some recommend that it be updated?
A:
BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System and is the software that is integrated into your motherboard.
The reason you might want to update the System BIOS is that the manufacturer will often release updates that can improve performance and security.
A BIOS update is like a driver update, but it must be applied when it first starts up and before the operating system loads.
You can check with your computer manufacturer to see if they have an updated BIOS patch and download it from their site. It can be tricky, though. And if not done correctly you could end up disabling your computer completely.
Most computer users don’t update this unless there’s a problem.