Please read before installing Ultimate Edition 4.0
Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 7:08 pmI'd like to first say I really like Ultimate Edition and have had versions since 3.5. I also need to say I've been into computers for 35 years and spent over 20 years as a computer and network tech. So I fix problems with both and am not a newbie to computers or Linux. I even worked with Unix back in the 80's.
I hadn't visited the Ultimate Edition sites for a while and looked this week to see if there was a newer version. I grabbed Ultimate Edition 4.0 x86 and used Yumi to put it on my internal SSD. Worked great and really like it but the way Yumi sets it up (in a multiboot environment) it is still like a Live CD version. So I like it so much I decide I'll install it on an external USB 3.0 drive so I can save changes and add programs. Please don't make the mistake of doing this without reading all of what I'll say here. Firstly I have Windows 7 on my main C: drive. When I started the install of Ultimate Edition 4.0 to my external drive (after booting Ultimate Edition from the multiboot drive) I noticed it took a very long time searching my system (10 hard drives total). When it finally got to the choice of where to install Ultimate Edition I noticed by default it wanted to go on my 1st HD (C: drive with Windows). I made certain to change that to my external drive as I was already concerned about what it was doing in it's long search. I firstly assume it was looking at all the drives in my system but WHY? Why not just allow the choice before it looks at all the drives as to which drive you want to install it on? Then it would only need to look at that one drive. That in itself is not the BIG problem though. As I said I clearly made certain it was only go to be installing anything to my external USB drive. What happened next should never happen to your worst enemy. It failed installing to the external drive as it was a bit flaky (which I knew) but it wiped my Windows C: drive leaving it without even a partition. Killed GPT as this was setup with Win X64 and UEFI. Everything gone. It took me most of a day to get it all back and fully restored. Again I made sure from the start to be certain I was not writing to anything except the external USB drive. I am not sure how this happened but the very fact that it defaults to trying to write to your first internal boot drive is IMO not a good default choice.
Sorry for the rant here in a first post. But hopefully this will save anyone else the grief I went through. I've been a member on the other Ultimate Edition forum ( www.ultimateeditionoz.com ) for over a year but just signed up here as I see this is now where more discussion is happening on Ultimate Edition.
Just for additional info system is MSI Z77A-G45 mainboard with Intel I7-3770k and 8GB RAM with 4 SSD's internal and 2 more HD's internal with 4 external HD's. I can boot from some 20+ versions of Linux, Win XP, Win 7, and Win 8.1 just by pressing the righ keys
I hadn't visited the Ultimate Edition sites for a while and looked this week to see if there was a newer version. I grabbed Ultimate Edition 4.0 x86 and used Yumi to put it on my internal SSD. Worked great and really like it but the way Yumi sets it up (in a multiboot environment) it is still like a Live CD version. So I like it so much I decide I'll install it on an external USB 3.0 drive so I can save changes and add programs. Please don't make the mistake of doing this without reading all of what I'll say here. Firstly I have Windows 7 on my main C: drive. When I started the install of Ultimate Edition 4.0 to my external drive (after booting Ultimate Edition from the multiboot drive) I noticed it took a very long time searching my system (10 hard drives total). When it finally got to the choice of where to install Ultimate Edition I noticed by default it wanted to go on my 1st HD (C: drive with Windows). I made certain to change that to my external drive as I was already concerned about what it was doing in it's long search. I firstly assume it was looking at all the drives in my system but WHY? Why not just allow the choice before it looks at all the drives as to which drive you want to install it on? Then it would only need to look at that one drive. That in itself is not the BIG problem though. As I said I clearly made certain it was only go to be installing anything to my external USB drive. What happened next should never happen to your worst enemy. It failed installing to the external drive as it was a bit flaky (which I knew) but it wiped my Windows C: drive leaving it without even a partition. Killed GPT as this was setup with Win X64 and UEFI. Everything gone. It took me most of a day to get it all back and fully restored. Again I made sure from the start to be certain I was not writing to anything except the external USB drive. I am not sure how this happened but the very fact that it defaults to trying to write to your first internal boot drive is IMO not a good default choice.
Sorry for the rant here in a first post. But hopefully this will save anyone else the grief I went through. I've been a member on the other Ultimate Edition forum ( www.ultimateeditionoz.com ) for over a year but just signed up here as I see this is now where more discussion is happening on Ultimate Edition.
Just for additional info system is MSI Z77A-G45 mainboard with Intel I7-3770k and 8GB RAM with 4 SSD's internal and 2 more HD's internal with 4 external HD's. I can boot from some 20+ versions of Linux, Win XP, Win 7, and Win 8.1 just by pressing the righ keys