I had disk damage when using Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. YMMV.
In one case, a file inside System Volume Information, something
related to the Search Indexer (which was actually turned off),
had a security descriptor (SID) damaged. CHKDSK would not fix it.
I had to transfer all the files off the partition, format to NTFS
again, transfer the files back, and it was repaired.
Oh man! I hate when that nonsense happens. Although I would guess that
BartPE or WinPE would have fixed it right away. Everybody has a BartPE /
WinPE disc, right? If not, you should. As it is as handy as a Win9x
StartUp disk for Win9x machines.
I never have problems like this dual booting Win2K/WinXP. But
the newer OSes, there is always some risks associated with the
back and forth.
Me either, nor with earlier versions. The last dualboot I had was
Windows XP Pro SP3 and the beta of Windows 7. When the beta expired, I
deleted its partition and expanded the XP one to use the whole drive.
Then I had to remove the Boot folder and varies boot files that Windows
7 threw on the XP partition and replace the boot sector with one that XP
can use.
Everything worked great, except if you make a backup with Paragon and
restore. Paragon somehow thinks that Windows 7 is still there (it even
gets the build version right in the Paragon logs). And Paragon rewrites
over the boot sector and makes changes to boot.ini so it would correctly
boot Windows 7, which doesn't exists anymore. If you do the same on
another XP system with Paragon that never had Windows 7 on them, no
problem at all.
Since then I will not have more than one OS on a machine at a time. If
you don't have enough machines, just use removable boot drives. This
machine I am on right now I can swap hard drives in 2 seconds, for
example. All I had to do is to buy an extra drive and a carrier.
Any time these things have happened here, it's *not* due to
a dirty shutdown. I know all about that end of things. I
run on a UPS. I'm careful to Safely Remove, even when it isn't
absolutely necessary. I don't hot plug SATA drives or anything.
If I need to add a SATA drive to the computer, I shut down and
add it. I do that mainly, so the drives don't suffer any
shock or vibration while still spinning.
I used to be a big believer of UPS back when, but I gave up on them
about 8 years back. As I retired my last desktop back then too and UPS
are costly, inefficient, heavy, and fails when you need them the most.
For one example, it doesn't make a lot of sense to take 12VDC, convert
it to 120VAC, when the computers power supply is only going to convert
it back to DC once again anyway. As it is so much more efficient to use
that 12VDC directly. In fact, this is how the power supplies used in
laptops, tablets, slates, etc. runs from the battery anyway. So it makes
so much more sense to go this route. The benefits are many, like smaller
capacity batteries, longer run times, portability, lighter, easier
battery replacement, etc.
