Satellite C850 - downgrade from Win 8 to Win 7

Question

Epilogue:
Ok, so I've tried my best. I realise there are a few nice things about Win8 but like a ginger stepchild I just can't accept it as part of my life. I've had the laptop for 6 months now and regardless of changes I make I just keep on coming back to the fact I am trying to force Win 8 into the way Win 7 works which is daft when Win 7 is available. The only real reason I have held back is that Win 8 was the pre-installed OS (Toshiba should really review that decision, it's a horrible OS for anything other than casual tablet use and effectively cripples their hardware). However the time has come, I simply can't continue. Win7 must return to the throne.
Going Forward:
Anyway, preamble aside, I have a couple of questions regarding the "downgrade". First off I have used the Toshiba 'Recovery Media Creator' to create the backup disks (which I presume return the laptop to the "out of the box" state) and backed up any important data. I have Windows 7 on a bootable USB stick (A legal copy too - oh, how decadent!).
I believe I need to set the _Secure Boot_ to *Disabled* and the _Boot Mode_ to *CSM Boot* in order for my bootable USB stick to be detected. I have read several pages about this and some suggest I will need some sort of SATA drivers on the stick too. Can someone confirm is this is true or not? If it is true, where do I get them from (URL if poss?) and where do I put them on the stick (root? Will it ask for a location?).
In terms of installation, it's just the standard Win 7 install, albeit you need to delete all the partitions on the HDD to remove the GPT legacy stuff, right? Once the Secure Boot/UEFI malarkey is gone it's just a standard laptop - or am I fooling myself?
What next:
YOU! I NEED YOU! In a Kitchener fashion (if you don't know what I mean, google Kitchener), I need you to tell me if I am being an idiot. Not about the "downgrade" as that is possibly the most intelligent thing I will do with this laptop - Win 8 is so frustratingly awkward that I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't the first Operating System diagnosed with a personality disorder - the thing I need people to tell me is whether I have missed anything out on my "return of zen" checklist. Is it really just BIOS, USB boot (with SATA drivers?), delete partition(s), create new unified partition then finally install the new OS? Does that all sound about right or am I going to be stuck half way through only to find I've forgotten to change someting leaving my laptop fubar'ed?
TL;DR?
Win 7 over Win 8, need assistance.
Summary:
Thanks for anyone replying. Power to your, em... well whatever you want power to (except there you dirty bunny!).

Answer 1

I've given Win8 all the chances in the world, but as MS seem determined to annoy developers by hiding the simplest of stuff behind 3 layers of s**t while at the same time lifting their skirt to tablets and mobile devices then I honestly don't see the point in continuing to fight what is a badly misjudged and poorly implemented mish mash of 7 and 8 when 7 is considerably better for developers.
People might like 8, I'm not knocking them, but I've been using operating systems since the early 80's (yes, sadly, I am that old) and very few have been as frustrating as 8 - it's not that it can't do the stuff I want, it's that it's hidden away making the whole experience disappointing and time consuming.
So, that aside, I can confirm that I am now on Win 7, although it was not without it's temporary problems. Let me explain...
I made a backup, switched UEFI off and put a USB key containing windows install into the machine. All is as normal, booting up hitting the setup, selecting the install location until I am greeted with a drive that has maybe 4 partitions on it, one of them being the Toshiba backup the rest being Win 8 and the UEFI/secure boot malarkey.
I deleted all the partitions except the backup one with the assumption I could then create a new partition and format it. Windows install was happy about removing partitions but it really didn't like creating new ones and formatting them. This left me in a state where I could boot from USB but I had no partitions on the machine (except the non-bootable backup).
So next step was to try and figure out what was going on. Sadly it's a 2 1/2" HD in the laptop so I couldn't just take it out and piggy back onto my desktop PC (3 1/2") instead I downloaded a copy of ubuntu, stuck it onto my stick, booted up from the USB and used gpart to view the partitions and to format them.
Bit annoying having to download a full OS just to get a HD partition tool and I am sure more Linux savvy people could knock up a bootable stick with just gpart on it, but still my sledgehammer/nut solution was exactly that, a solution.
So, Win 7 installer onto the stick again and away we go.. Now I can't remember if I formatted the drive as NTFS or FAT32 from ubuntu however now that the drive was partitioned and active then the Windows installer had no problems about reformatting (an empty) partition to match the format it needs. From there it was just a standard Win install.
Finally I downloaded the relevant drivers from this site and applied them. No SATA drivers were needed while installing Win7 but perhaps if they were present I wouldn't have needed to do the round about step of using Ubuntu to format/partition the drive. Either way, it's working now.
As for Win 8? A failed experiment in the same way Vista was and, like Vista to Win 7, I expect Win 9 to be to an improved Win 8.
Generally MS creates good OS's every second iteration. Win ME (bad), Win XP (good), Vista (bad), 7 (good), 8 (bad), 9 (? - we will see).