Windows8, UEFI and partitioning

Archimedes

New Member
Messages
1
Hi all

My wife got a new Dell XPS laptop from her employer. A very impressive bit of kit with Windows 8, 64 bit, masses of RAM and many, many processor cores (dreadful touchpad though :mad:). And 1TB HDD.

She asked me to set up it the same way as her existing Windows 7 laptop, so a fun few hours discovering how the charms bar works (before giving up on that and going for Start8) and installing various bits. I then decided to partition the huge drive so the OS and program files are on one partition which can be imaged and restored with Acronis as required while all the jpgs mp3s docxs etc remain safe on the second partition (every computer in out home is set up this way and I've found it to be the best method).

I shrank the partition as much as possible and ended up with 400 GB before immovable files put a stop to that - needlessly large I thought so I installed EASEUS partition manager which I have used with W7 without problem (can you see my obvious mistake yet?) and set it for a 200 GB partition, started it going and popped back five minutes later expecting to find everything as desired. Instead the laptop no longer believed it had a HDD. Several days of frustration and blame from my wife and trying every fix on the net - and finding a lot of people who had done the exact same thing (although probably without so much blame) - and a talk with Dell resulted in the conclusion of a failed HDD and a replacement drive fitted. The current situation is that the machine is pretty much as wanted except the partition sizes aren't as required and no Acronis image has been made.

So, the questions this experience raises are:

1. Did the drive fail or did EASEUS break it? (If it was just waiting to fail my opinion is that it's good to find out so early on and not when it was full of data that hadn't been backed up).

2. Which partition managers are safe to use with the combination of Windows 8 and UEFI that Dell have produced? I'm somewhat nervous of just experimenting on this point.

3. Is Acronis safe to use with Windows 8 and UEFI.

Thanks for your time.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
Welcome to EightForums.

I would look for a 3rd party Partitioning,Backup & Cloning software, which fully supports Windows 8, uEFI, GPT & Secure Boot.
Which is signed by Microsoft.

The only 3rd party software that I know of, that fully supports Windows 8 & is signed by Microsoft .

Paragon 12 paid for has support for Windows 8 uEFI, GPT & Secure Boot.

PARAGON Software Group - partition manager, drive backup, hard disk partitioning

Also for backup only:
could consider SSR Desktop Edition

* Now Released * Symantec System Recovery 2013 | Symantec Connect Community
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
Be aware, if you do anything that changes the boot partition on the drive, that will invalidate the Dell recovery partition and the only way to restore is to do a clean install with discs.

I'm using Macrium for hard drive backups on both Win 7 and Win 8 and working without problems (I've done test restores to validate that Macrium restores work). I used to use Acronis but it has failed me twice and it won't get a third chance.

Paragon is another popular alternative to Acronis. A friend that has a commerical DAW (recording) PC company left Acronis for Paragon.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Built
    CPU
    i7 6700K
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero
    Memory
    16 Gb G Skill TridentZ DDR4 3400
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel (i7 CPU)
    Sound Card
    RealTek Integrated
    Monitor(s) Displays
    27" Dell SE2717HR
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1080
    Hard Drives
    500GB Samsung 850 SSD, 3TB for backups
    PSU
    EVGA Supernova 750 G2
    Case
    BeQuiet Silent Base 600
    Cooling
    Deepcool Captain 120EX
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Wireless
    Mouse
    Logitech wireless
    Internet Speed
    Cable - 100MB Downlink
    Browser
    Edge/Firefox
    Antivirus
    Microsoft
    Other Info
    Sonar Platinum 64 bit recording studio software with MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid recording interface unit.
Back
Top