DISABLE IT! Google how to do it.
Window 8 has something called fast boot. Basically uses RAM to actually never shut down all the way. This is great when windows 8 starts, it starts fast...problem is if you ever need to access the HD using a Linux or other boot utility without booting into windows, the HD is locked & unable to mount.

Found this out this week when I tried to reset a password for a company laptop that wasn't setup right with the Admin account not enabled. Couldn't do a damn thing because the fast boot locked the file system & couldn't mount the drive to get access to the windows partition.

 

Fuzzy,

What boot disk were you trying?

While not convenient, I wonder what would have happened if you have pulled the drive from the laptop and tried to attach it as a second drive on a different machine?...

Also, is Fast boot enabled by default or is that something someone turned on for that machine?

 

Everything I had...I even tried the overwrite of the utilman.exe with command prompt...couldn't do it because the drive was locked. PITA.
It's default....
Didn't try to remove the HD...it's under warranty so I couldn't void that.

 

Thanks for the info Fuzzy!

Will have to do some testing....

 

Interesting ....

Very, very interesting. Thanks for the info!