Trying to back up Windows 8.1 Acer notebook

[PartingShot]

Hi everyone. Longtime forum member here who needs some help. I always appreciate the assistance that this community provides.

I recently purchased a low-end Acer notebook computer (Acer E5-521-25P9) which came with "Windows 8.1 with Bing" installed.

I wish to back up the entire system hard disk drive before migrating from the hard drive to a solid state drive.

Up to this point, I've relied on Acronis, which has always worked perfectly for my computers and laptops. But for the first time ever, I am dealing with backing up a GPT formatted hard disk (not MBR), and a system requiring UEFI in order to properly boot. Sadly, non of my Acronis rescue boot CDs can back up such a hard drive, nor even run unless I switch from "UEFI Boot" to "Legacy Boot" in the notebook's UEFI/BIOS setup.

I am hoping that maybe someone here has the experience of creating backup images of Windows 8, and can name a solution that (1) has the ability to create a backup image of a GPT formatted hard drive, (2) can create CD/DVD rescue media (I prefer these formats over booting from a USB stick), and (3) *optional* can boot in a UEFI enabled system, so I don't have to enter UEFI/BIOS to switch boot modes when I need to do a backup.

As an aside, I did do some research and found an ISO file for Macrium Reflect to create a bootable rescue CD, and while it did run and detect the GPT hard disk, the backup operation (from HDD to an attached USB 2.0 flash drive) began well, but gradually slowed to a crawl (like 1Mbps transfer rate with an estimated completion time of 70+ hours)

So if anyone has a suggestion for me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance for the help, folks!

[nic2k4]

Page 21 of the User Manual.

[nic2k4]

I should add that the OS image is locked to that PC, I don't know how this is going to affect swapping the HDD; the joys of UEFI and secure boot.