A method and firmware for accessing a protected area of a magnetic storage device via firmware control. During early system initialization, various firmware components are loaded and executed to initialize a computer system. These firmware components include a firmware driver for accessing magnetic storage devices connected to the computer system. The system firmware enables a protected area on a magnetic storage device's media to be accessed under firmware control. After firmware accesses, the protected area is closed from access by non-firmware entities (e.g., operating systems) by “hiding” the true size of the media such that those entities are unaware of this area of the media. Mechanisms are disclosed for providing firmware access to the protected area only during pre-boot, and for both pre-boot and run-time operations. The firmware-controlled media access scheme may be used to load firmware stored on magnetic media during pre-boot and to store system information in the protected area during pre-boot and/or run-time operations.
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