What is the purpose of a boot priority sequence or order in BIOS

Posted by rbeede on Super User See other posts from Super User or by rbeede
Published on 2012-08-30T02:45:15Z Indexed on 2012/08/30 3:40 UTC
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boot

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bios

A BIOS provides multiple options for specifying an order/priority to search for boot devices. Is there really much of a purpose now to have to specify more than one possible boot device?

It would seem to me it is only useful when popping in an CD/DVD to install an OS after which the common scenario is to always boot from the hard drive unless something is broken.

I'm curious as to why not simply have 1 option/device to set in the BIOS and expect the user to press a key to do alternate boot instead?

Is there still a scenario for having the BIOS try multiple devices in a configured order?

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