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issues with uefi, more than 6 drives, ahci, windows 8.

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superboyac:
i was planning on upgrading a windows 7 desktop to windows 8.  the first time i tried installing, it worked fine, but i first had to disconnect all drives other than the OS drive to be able to go through the installation.  Then, I couldn't connect my external drive because it would be the 7th drive connected.  So i remember this issue back when i was upgrading to windows 7.  it had something to do with a 6 drive limit, drives larger than 2TB, uefi booting, and ahci. 

So it appears i'm having this issue again.  Except this time, I can't seem to be able to install windows 8 in uefi mode.  I've tried all the instructions online, mainly the advice to boot from usb on a rufus created disc with fat32 and uefi options chosen.  the problem is that this disc will not boot into the installer.  it just hangs with a blinking cursor.

I have run out of options.  I think part of the problem is the alienware motherboard I'm using, which I'm not too thrilled with.  it's an obscure, off the consumer market board, and not much available in terms of online discussion or drivers or anything.  I believe it's actually an MS-7543 motherboard originally made by MSI v1.0.

Anyway, I'll probably give up and just do a new computer later.  Probably the server i've been planning to build for years.

ewemoa:
Not helpful for your situation, but I have not had good luck with UEFI (too many glitches and at least one additional administrative burden that seems to arise from its use) and these days I avoid it.  IIUC, the quality of UEFI implementations varies considerably.  At least the glitches might get ironed out eventually...may be?

superboyac:
Not helpful for your situation, but I have not had good luck with UEFI (too many glitches and at least one additional administrative burden that seems to arise from its use) and these days I avoid it.  IIUC, the quality of UEFI implementations varies considerably.  At least the glitches might get ironed out eventually...may be?
-ewemoa (January 18, 2015, 06:30 PM)
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i think my experiences have been similar, quite painful.  however, somewhere during all these headaches, i thought i learned that you need uefi for large drives (>2tb) or more than 6 drives.  I really am not sure.  But I want to say I've encountered this issue like 3 times before.

ewemoa:
What you said at least about large drives is one of the "draws" of UEFI, IIRC -- perhaps number of drives too, not sure. I happen to not have drives that exceed 1 TB, nor simultaneously connect that many so have "escaped"...What I was lured by was the support for a large number of the same type of "first-class" partition -- i.e. MBR only supported up to 4 primary partitions and with UEFI you get many more of the "standard" partition.

It turned out though that there is an additional headache taking a drive from one machine to another if using UEFI -- I found the drive wasn't enough (at least for what I tried), it was also necessary to modify something that is stored in the PC.  With MBR / legacy setups, I could take a drive from one machine and use it on another without any other "state" that needed to be transferred -- with some caveats regarding hardware.  This additional complication was enough of a turn-off for me that I now look for motherboards that support MBR / legacy mode.  I don't know how much longer this approach will be viable though...

xtabber:
i thought i learned that you need uefi for large drives (>2tb)-superboyac (January 18, 2015, 11:36 PM)
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You can use non-system drives >2TB if the partition table is GPT and not MBR. You must also be running a 64-bit operating system because a 32-bit OS cannot address more than 2.2TB.

UEFI is a replacement for the system BIOS, not a drive partition manager. You only need UEFI if your system drive is >2TB because a BIOS cannot boot from a GPT partition table.

Windows can support up to 24 drives (C through Z), but your motherboard will limit the number of internal drives your system can support.   If you have more than 4 drives in a PC, you really should be looking at offloading them to a NAS box.

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