Dual booting with multiple hard drives and POP!OS installed first

BigBadBeef

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Been with pop!os a few months now. I am still thrilled with the "can do" attitude with almost everything I set about doing it. Almost. The unfortunate thing is that the privacy disrespecting vermin of windows 10 has been on my sh**t list since it came out and for the damnest of me, I can't get completely rid of that cancer!

I need to dual-boot. But I have pop!os already installed, so I have to go from there. Unfortunately I am having trouble locating a suitable guide for doing just that.

I am asking you veterans - what would be the best way of approaching that? Oh, and don't worry about partitioning and such, I have multiple hard drives, one is already NTFS.
 


In your case, you just go ahead and install Windows on another partition/drive, finish that and then boot with a live USB, and just use 'boot-repair'. It's pretty straightforward.

Hmm... I'll try to save some time by just finding a link:


You're mostly interested in step 3.
 
In your case, you just go ahead and install Windows on another partition/drive, finish that and then boot with a live USB, and just use 'boot-repair'. It's pretty straightforward.

Hmm... I'll try to save some time by just finding a link:


You're mostly interested in step 3.
Does pop!os come with grub?
 
Does pop!os come with grub?

Wait, yeah, that might be a Pop quirk. Hmm... This might be worth asking here:


They'll be much more familiar with systemd-boot. Someone here may know, but they'll likely know.
 
Wait, yeah, that might be a Pop quirk. Hmm... This might be worth asking here:


They'll be much more familiar with systemd-boot. Someone here may know, but they'll likely know.
I suppose I could just install grub, right?
 
Yes you can, I helped someone do switch over from systemd-boot to grub sometime again. Checkout this topic.
 
LOL My original comment included switching to grub, but I decided that might be more work/complexity and don't know your skill level, so I edited it out. Switching to grub shouldn't be all that difficult.
 
What matters in the end is that the bootloader gets repaired so I can boot successfully- both OS. I have reviewed both procedures, and it requires terminal work.

While I'm game, there is the question of what to do when things don't go according to plan...
 
Did that 2 months ago, and its coming back to haunt me now. But its only VR, and only temporary, because I have an "old" Rift... which I will abandon as soon as I get something newer.

Nothing urgent per se.
 
I've never done it, but from what I've seen, it's as "simple" as installing grub, telling it to to use os-prober, and then removing systemd-boot.

I'd keep a boot-repair disk handy during this process. If grub doesn't work out of the box like that, then boot-repair will likely get you sorted. Likely...
 
So then you're saying that boot repair would work on systemd-boot? If that is so, then I wouldn't have to tamper with grub at all.

By the way, POP!_Planet is experiencing technical difficulties. Probably has something to do with being overloaded for a donation-based platform. It would seem that presenting my dilemma over there would have to wait.
 
Boot-repair should work *after* systemd-boot has been removed and grub installed. It should even do it automatically, using the automatic fix option. I think I once wrote a boot repair article, actually. Yeah, I thought so...


Boot-repair will only work (or likely only work) after systemd-boot has been removed and grub installed. I'm pretty sure you can even install grub from boot-repair.
 
Boot-repair should work *after* systemd-boot has been removed and grub installed. It should even do it automatically, using the automatic fix option. I think I once wrote a boot repair article, actually. Yeah, I thought so...


Boot-repair will only work (or likely only work) after systemd-boot has been removed and grub installed. I'm pretty sure you can even install grub from boot-repair.

Further research into pop!os has revealed that it also has a "refresh installation" option. While that is a guaranteed way to fix the problem, I am concerned that I will be losing custom repositories (such as Mono) and gnome tweaks that I added since installed the operating system...
 
I am concerned that I will be losing custom repositories (such as Mono) and gnome tweaks that I added since installed the operating system...

It may not overwrite them, but they're easy to restore if they do. The folks at Pop! Planet would know more about that.
 
It may not overwrite them, but they're easy to restore if they do. The folks at Pop! Planet would know more about that.

As I said, pop planet is experiencing sporadic technical difficulties. I am already engaged on the discussion on reddit. One of them claims I won't have to do anything at all since the windows installation will automatically locate pop's EFI partition and put its EFI files there.

In essence, he claims I won't have to do anything at all.
 
In essence, he claims I won't have to do anything at all.

Give it a shot. It'd be great if it does.

I should take a look at Pop Planet to see what kinda hosting they're needing, as you say they're having difficulties and I saw a similar message about resources the last time I looked.
 
Give it a shot. It'd be great if it does.

I should take a look at Pop Planet to see what kinda hosting they're needing, as you say they're having difficulties and I saw a similar message about resources the last time I looked.
Yeah its donation based, and they got overwhelmed with the sudden influx of new users due to the rapid growth of pop!os popularity. They currently don't have enough money to afford better hosting.
 
Have Multiple drives and Win10 on an NVmE. To install Linux MInt onto an SSD I just unplugged the NVmE. As I was getting an error in Mint. It saw the Win partition, it saw the space, it just refused to install bootloader onto the M.2 After disconnecting that Mint installed onto the SSD. M.2 reconnected changed boot menu in Bios to boot to SSD, Grub comes up asking to boot into 1 Mint, 2 Mint command line 3 Windows 4 Bios. Did nothing in the way of setting it up that way it was pretty automatic.

The Only hiccup was Upgrading the CPU after less than 2 months with the other AMD. (Was on sale I swear :cool: ) Bios changed boot order to M.2 with Windows. Changed it back to SSD, got my menu back. Unlike my HP laptop with dual Win / Mint I do not have to hold down DEL at turn on.
 

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