Changing from Bios motherboard to UEFI motherboard - advice on planned method please.

[Travis373]

Hi all

I'm upgrading my mobo and cpu today and I think I might have an issue with switching from bios to UEFI and using my storage drives. here's what I'm installing:

GigaByte Z97X
Intel Core i5 4460

and I have a 120 Gb SSD as my windows partition and two drives, 1 Tb + 250 gb, joined as a spanned dynamic volume for data storage (which I'm now realising was a stupid idea and will soon be fixed.)

I'm currently running windows 8.1 on the SSD but that was installed from the windows 8 upgrade version and then the 8 to 8.1 upgrade, so I don't have a windows 8 or 8.1 iso or install disks but I do have a windows 7 64 bit iso.

Here's what I plan to do:

- create a UEFI bootable usb with the windows 7 iso I have, ready for a fresh install
- Install the new MoBo + cpu with only my Windows boot drive installed NOT my 2 spanned storage drives
- fresh install the windows 7 64 bit in UEFI - GPT boot mode
- install all my required new MoBo drivers
- update to windows 8 with my windows 8 upgrade product key and same again to update to 8.1
- Put my spanned storage drives back in, rescan disks and import foreign drives
- use my new MoBos USB 3.0 to transfer what I want to keep to my friends USB 3.0 external drive
- format the 2 disk spanned volume and convert them to GPT
- transfer data back

does this sound reasonable? what worries me is I'm not sure that the new UEFI based windows installation will recognise the storage drives as they will be MBR, anybody know if it will?

Thanks for your help.

 

[geofelt]

As far as I know, UEFI is just a more modern bios implementation made possible by having more hardware space to hold it.

If you have separated your two drives into independent drives, you should have no problem reattaching them to the new motherboard.

I think windows 8 is more able to adapt to a new/different motherboard than windows 7 was.

I would try to boot with your current "C" drive. If successful, then you only need to install your new motherboard chipset drivers.

I think you can create your own w 8 media:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

 

[Travis373]

As far as I know, UEFI is just a more modern bios implementation made possible by having more hardware space to hold it.

If you have separated your two drives into independent drives, you should have no problem reattaching them to the new motherboard.

I think windows 8 is more able to adapt to a new/different motherboard than windows 7 was.

I would try to boot with your current "C" drive. If successful, then you only need to install your new motherboard chipset drivers.

I think you can create your own w 8 media:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

Unfortunately my windows 8 product key won't work with that windows 8.1 installation media, but thank you for pointing me towards it. I was under the impression that if I simply boot from my "C" drive then I will be booting in UEFI - legacy and I won't get the full advantage of the UEFI system, which I'd like to

 

[Travis373]

In case anyone comes across a similar issue, what I suggested in my original post worked perfectly. I now have windows 8 running on a UEFI - GPT disk