Of course, as I have a data transfer going on I did not follow through but I DID go as far as selecting to do an image backup in Win 7 and the Seagate drive came up as a viable selection. And yes, it IS a Seagate Expansion drive. Possibly the difference is that I formatted the drive... ?

Not going to happen tonight but let me know if you would like me to attempt to do an actual image backup to the drive. After the data transfer is done I'll have plenty of space to make the try. I'm sure that it would work but it takes doing to prove. You always have to remove the crud that the makers put on a drive just like cleaning a new system.

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My external drives are Seagate, the Expansion drive is permanently connected to the desktop Windows 7 machine and does a back up every Friday night using Acronis True Image.

My portable drive is a Seagate and I use that with this Asus Notebook running 8.1, I use Acronis True Image on that one as well plus I do a backup using the inbuilt backup program.

So far I've had no problems with either and I've never used the built in Seagate software, apart from registering them.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

OK, they must be doing something different. Good to hear.

Yes, Jay, I always remove the software that's on these drives. I think with the drive in question, I couldn't get access to the drive or something. I forget. It was probably 3 years ago.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

Well I went ahead and tried a Windows 7 image backup and it failed. Doing some research I found that this is not specific to the Seagate drive but seems to be that Windows does not fully support the 4KB per sector formats used on drives over 2TB. The failure is caused by windows not being able to match the sector layout when attempting to make the .VHD snapshot.

Western Digital has a utility to 'fool' Windows 7/Vista into 'thinking' the 4KB sectors are actually 512Bytes. The physical sector remains at 4KB but logical sectors of 512Bytes are created within each 4KB physical sector. While this works to allow a Windows 7/Vista image to work there is a performance hit.

This issue is addressed in Windows 8 and 8.1.

I'm not concerned as I never intended to use it for images anyway. The copy from my 2TB external went fine and everything works as I intended. Oh, I DID have to change media players as neither Windows Media Player nor Media Player Classic like the 4KB sectors any more than the image backup. I'll use either VLC player or UMPlayer. Both work just fine with the 4KB sectors. Explorer works just fine as to file copies and read/writes. I used Explorer to copy the old drive to the new.

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Sigh... It looks like I'm going to bite the bullet... After I post this I am going to start a complete image of my system and data partitions on my media system.

I hope that my Win 8 install disk will allow an upgrade install but will probably go ahead if not. Since all of my data is on a non-system partition I lose nothing in the attempt. Also, if things don't work out, I just restore the image I'm about to make.

I LOVE Win 7 for a media system and it just plain does media better than Win 8 but there are plenty of third party software packages that can make up the lack of media support in Win 8/8.1.

While I don't seem to really need to worry as all is fine it still bothers me that Windows 7 has issues with drives over 2TB. Even though all is working as to what I need I want everything working totally.

Since my media system is self built I MUST remember to look for device drivers for Win 8.1... Hate it when I forget the simple stuff.

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According to Ed Bott, it allows upgrades.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

8.1 is downloading. Now I have to find my free code for media center... don't use it often but since I have it I might as well use.

Of course the new external drive issues went away once Win 8 was installed. The thing that really made me do this was not Media Player and Media Player Classic not working but the fact that I could not change the drive name in Windows Explorer. This told me that there were more issues than just a few programs not liking the drive. Everything seemed to work and be fine but I just didn't like it. Yes, I still consider Win 7 a better OS for a media system but I can still do all I want without any hassle.

Next time I fire up my Asus laptop I'll have to kill the Win 8 install in the dual boot. That's no big issue, boot to the Win 7 side and use EasyBCD to kill 8.1 and then just expand the data partition to include what had been Win 8.1.

Actually I sort of did something by accident. Right now (before the 8.1 upgrade) I have both the the 'classic desktop' and a smaller area with the newer tile desktop. Actually all I did was to start the download for 8.1 from the Windows store and then open a program that needed the 'classic' desktop. Right now I'm looking at a screen with the Windows Store app still on the left of the screen while IE and the classic desktop is open on the right. The store app takes about 15-20% of the screen while the classic takes the rest. And no, I am not mistaking the IE app in the tiles for the classic desktop. I have the task bar and everything on the larger right hand of the screen.

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Oh, WOW!!!! I really haven't used Win 8 for a while but it seems that it can work almost like a dual desktop. I won't really use this much but it seems pretty cool.

Here is the WOW! part. The three dots in the divider seem to work as a control to set which desktop has the priority on the screen.

You know how, if you drag a 'tile app' to the left, it kind of sits there and has a vertical bar with three dots in the middle? Well, it seems from what I looking at, that you can then open an app that requires the classic desktop such as the 'real' IE. You will now have what I described in my last post with the tile app and the classic desktop both on the screen. If I grab the dots and throw to the right the tile desktop has the majority of the screen. If I throw the dots back to the left the classic desktop has priority.

Sorry if this is old news but it is new to me.

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Actually it seems to be no news as I don't seem to be able to duplicate since I did the 8.1 update.

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Still works here, as it has all along.

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock

LOL! I probably just can't figure out quite how I did it.

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