How to enable Secure boot on Windows 8 at installaton ?

[my2cents]

Yes, you can customize your backup to include "only" what you want to back up. Notice in the screenshot below, there are check boxes to the lower-right of each partition and you can uncheck them as needed to remove them from the impending backup. Hope this helps. Good luck.



Update: In the cases of multiple drives, you can uncheck the box (top-left of drive) to remove an entire drive from the backup.

 

[David Bailey]

As My2Cents stated.

You can backup C drive but the option to restore Windows only takes a few extra MBs.

Picture:



The process is the same.

 

[op00iuy]

Yes, you are right the original BIOS(ver F7) did not have secure boot. The latest BIOS added secure boot functionality. I need to know whether the reason for Secure Boot being unsupported is because Windows 8 was a legacy install or whether my motherboard can't handle it??? I need to know definitely. And how do I format my HDD as GPT??

Well, my Z77 based Gigabyte board was installed via UEFI, and mine says Off... so I would guess it's because of install (I never turned mine on)

I notice in your first screenshot that it says your OS is running as "Legacy", which I belive is BIOS (although I seem to recall mine saying BIOS back in the day, maybe this has changed). You definitely need to do a UEFI install to get SecureBoot. It's possible to convert to UEFI (I did) but it's a pain.

There's an article here:

Converting Windows BIOS installation to UEFI - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

I read the article that you have provided. I have some questions regarding that since my partitions dont exactly match up to what is described over there. Plus, you have already converted an existing MBR to UEFI so i hope you will be able to guide me -:

1 ) This is probably the biggest problem. In the article it is stated that, disk 0 partitions will look like the following -:

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 350 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 126 GB 350 MB

But my partitions of disk 0 look like the following (view screenshot)-:


as you can see there is NO partition reserved for the boot information ONLY. I have a PRIMARY PARTITION of 68 GB which is my entire C drive. Now if I delete that then I loose my entire Windows installation. In the article they only delete the SYSTEM Partition and recreate to an UEFI boot partition. Now obviously I cant delete my entire Windows partition and recreate just a boot partition. What do I do to work around this ?? Is there a way now to separate the boot data from my C drive and put it into another partition of its own ??

2) The next problem is that I have 2 internal hard disks connected(look at screenshot and ignore disk 2 its only a 8GB flashdrive connected to my machine at the time)-:


So do I have to convert both of the disk to use GPT ?? Which do I convert first ? Disk 1 or Disk 0 ? My guess is that I first convert Disk 1 and then move on to Disk 0 because if I convert disk 0 first then when I reboot disk 1 wont be recognizable anymore to the machine. Please guide me on what I am supposed to. How do I handle this ??

These are the two primary problems that I am facing now. I cant move forward until someone tells me how to handle these two problems. Thanks.

 

[Mystere]

No, you do not need to convert Disk 1 to GPT. Only your boot disk has to be GPT.

You need to resize your partitions. You can probably add the partitions to the end of the disk 0. However, I notice that Disk E: is 94% free, so you could just copy that data to F: and delete E: then move E: further down the drive using something like Paragon Partition Manager Express (Free version).

Paragon Partition Manager Free Edition - Leading partitioning software! | PARAGON Software Group - free partition software, resize partition

You would either copy the data from E: to F: or just resize E: smaller and move C: down to create space in front of C:\ for the special partitions.

 

[op00iuy]

No, you do not need to convert Disk 1 to GPT. Only your boot disk has to be GPT.

You need to resize your partitions. You can probably add the partitions to the end of the disk 0. However, I notice that Disk E: is 94% free, so you could just copy that data to F: and delete E: then move E: further down the drive using something like Paragon Partition Manager Express (Free version).

Paragon Partition Manager Free Edition - Leading partitioning software! | PARAGON Software Group - free partition software, resize partition

You would either copy the data from E: to F: or just resize E: smaller and move C: down to create space in front of C:\ for the special partitions.

Disk 0 now looks like the following on my machine-:


As you can see there is 500 MB of unallocated space in front of C Drive. What I want to do is that make a partition from this space and then transfer my system files only from C drive to this partition. That is I want to make that partition (which I will make from the unallocated space) as the "System Reserved" partition, where all my system files will be present. Please note I don't want to transfer my Windows installation files, just the bootloader and other files that tell the computer where Windows is located during the time of booting.

1. How do I do this ?? How do I transfer only the system files from C drive and put it into this partition ??
2. Also after the transfer is done is there anyway I can test whether my PC is actually booting from that partition or not ??? Because during the time of conversion I will be deleting this partition and creating a UEFI compatible one, so if this partition was not used in the first place only then I will land up in problems.

Thanks