how on earth to Dual Boot Linux with Two hard disks

[Iamgeese]

Some of us peasents run the risk of being tied to Windoze until the second coming of Christ. I have expensive windows locked software which is difficult to obtain and Wine does not work with them.

Both computers have 2 hard drives. The laptop appears to have at least an option for dual boot but it looks like I have to write a BAT file. I have never done this in my life.

My nearly £2000 I9 intel HP Z1 PC does not appear to have a dual boot option, I am hoping that I just dont know where it is or I will pissed! It will be ironic that my only £600 gaming laptop can be modifide.

I want linux on one hard disk and Windows on the other as opposed to having a partitioned drive which I know from years ago, my dad tried it and it is not the best.

 

[Brickwizard]

you have an HP laptop with Microsoft on it.
Depending on the distribution you wish to install
1, disable windows safe boot
2, disable windows fast-boot [quick-start]
3, do a power re-boot [not shutting down via panel] press and hold power button down for 10-15 seconds, or until power led goes out, Waite 10 seconds before switching back on,
4] insert your ISO-USB in the laptop
5, switch on whilst jiggling short boot key [usually F9 for HP but sometimes Esc]
6] boot to test mode
7, check everything is working ok with your distribution, if happy select install
8, during installation you will be given the option Full/clean install [this will completely kill windows] or install alongside [choose this option]
9, your next hurdle will be choosing which drive [if you have more than one] or partitioning the existing drive [your choice] on some distributions you can make a 3rd choice of letting the distribution installer do it for you.
10 make sure you let it install additional non-free drivers, and let it install grub
when you have successfully installed Linux it will give you the option of booting windows or Linux [you have about 8 seconds to choose or Linux will boot automatically]

as it is a new machine, i would be inclined to start with MX-AHS as a distribution

 

[LinuxIce]

Congrats on being able to have 2 drives on your PC and laptop. Just install GRUB on the disk that will have the linux. Most of the distros these days can detect windows and make an entry for the same in the GRUB menu. And do the rest like @Brickwizard said.

​

 

[Goatmilk]

Very stupid newbie here - if there are two hard drives, one with Windows and one with Linux, couldn't you simply stop the boot with F2, F12, whatever goes for you, go into BIOS and tell that thing which drive to boot and which to ignore?

And save the GRUB thing altogether?

Of course, I've got an old Windows where I think/hope it might work.

Edit: I'm ogling that option myself just in case I won't get my favorite game to work on Linux

 

[rado84]

Congrats on being able to have 2 drives on your PC and laptop. Just install GRUB on the disk that will have the linux. Most of the distros these days can detect windows and make an entry for the same in the GRUB menu. And do the rest like @Brickwizard said.

Why congrats for the PC? For a PC 2 drives are not enough nowadays. I have 5 drives (and 1 optical device) on my PC. "A" as in "Arch".

 

[f33dm3bits]

For a PC 2 drives are not enough nowadays. I have 5 drives (and 1 optical device) on my PC. "A" as in "Arch".

It depends how big your drives are, what you use them for and if you also have a NAS on the side. My desktop has a 2TB nvme ssd in it, my Proxmox server has 2x 4TB nvme's ssd's in it and 2x 24TB hard disks.

 

[Brickwizard]

My desktop has a 2TB nvme ssd in it, my Proxmox server has 2x 4TB nvme's ssd's in it and 2x 24TB hard disks.

I now feel a little ---------------inadequate, with just one NVMe 250gb Mint LMDE and one Plate spinner 500gb mint 21 of which I have used around 22% of the capacity

 

[f33dm3bits]

I now feel a little ---------------inadequate, with just one NVMe 250gb Mint LMDE and one Plate spinner 500gb mint 21 of which I have used around 22% of the capacity

Those 24TB disks were quite expensive so I hope they last me a while.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

It depends how big your drives are, what you use them for and if you also have a NAS on the side. My desktop has a 2TB nvme ssd in it, my Proxmox server has 2x 4TB nvme's ssd's in it and 2x 24TB hard disks.

lol, you better put something on those disks.
I have 2x1TB HDD and 500GB SSD and they're still not full in over 15 years of backup some of which is old crap data that I keep only to have feeling my drives are used for something.

 

[rado84]

It depends how big your drives are, what you use them for

True. I guess I didn't think about these factors when I wrote my previous post. But most people can't afford high volume hard disks nowadays. In my country 2 and 4 TB SSDs (2.5") are still way too expensive, so the most of us buy 3.5" HDDs of such volumes or higher cuz they're at least 4 times cheaper.
In my case A is 256 GB and it's for Arch (the system drive), B'n'E are 2.5" SSDs for music and games, C & D are 3.5" HDDs. C is for storage of games (installers, mods, other files), important docs and for porn, D is for movies and TV shows. Even with all that space, sometimes I still feel a shortage of space, so some day C (1 TB) will have to become another 4 TB HDD (D is 4 TB). Cuz some TV shows (like Stargate SG-1 remastered to FullHD) can reach 500 GB total size...

 

[The Duck]

For a PC 2 drives are not enough nowadays. I have 5 drives (and 1 optical device) on my PC. "A" as in "Arch".

View attachment 21490

My desktop has a 2TB nvme ssd in it, my Proxmox server has 2x 4TB nvme's ssd's in it and 2x 24TB hard disks.

I have 2x1TB HDD and 500GB SSD and they're still not full in over 15 years

Wow!

I can't even imagine having that kind of storage space.

I can't even imagine a need for all of that HDD / SSD.

I now feel a little ---------------inadequate, with just one NVMe 250gb Mint LMDE and one Plate spinner 500gb mint 21 of which I have used around 22% of the capacity

@Brickwizard you have more HDD / SSD space than I have.

In the desktop I have now it has an 80 GB HDD 2.5 GB to 5.0 GB used.

Most of my Linux desktops are run from USB Flash drive and don't even have a HDD / SSD installed the beauty of running Easy OS.

 

[Egzoset]

...I9 intel HP Z1 PC... I want linux on one hard disk and Windows on the other...

Why is there no mention of uEFI?

 

[rado84]

I can't even imagine having that kind of storage space.

I can't even imagine a need for all of that HDD / SSD.

That's probably because you watch TV and whatever they run on it but that's a bad dependency on TV. But I don't watch TV. I download (or buy, whenever possible) TV shows and movies, then shrink them to a lossless file size and burn them on BD-R discs. That way I can watch them whenever I want without the TV BS like dubbing, illiterate subtitles or commercials. And when I download a TV show (like Stargate SG-1, for instance), it's nearly 500 GB. Another 10 TV shows and those 4 TB are gone. That's why I have this many storages - in case I fill the 4TB, I still have another 1 TB HDD for 1 or 2 more TV shows, before the shrinking and burning starts. I currently have nearly 10 TB of TV shows and movies burned on BD-R discs and another 3 TB are waiting to be burned.

Also, let's don't forget that nowadays the most of the games are at least 50 GB, sometimes 4 times that size. Aside from that my music collection alone is 103-104 GB. Music videos downloaded from YT are 20-30 GB. I need space to store all that, so 2 storages only are unthinkable. I suppose I could buy 2 HDDs each with 20 TB space but that means Linux will be on a slow hard disk and that's out of the question.

 

[gvisoc]

Very stupid newbie here - if there are two hard drives, one with Windows and one with Linux, couldn't you simply stop the boot with F2, F12, whatever goes for you, go into BIOS and tell that thing which drive to boot and which to ignore?

And save the GRUB thing altogether?

Yes.

in my experience is the best option if you want to keep Secure Boot enabled and not have to be prompted for the Bitlocker recovery key at every Windows boot.

 

[Goatmilk]

Yes.

in my experience is the best option if you want to keep Secure Boot enabled and not have to be prompted for the Bitlocker recovery key at every Windows boot.

Thank you, that's good to know. I think I'll keep my old windows hdd around until I'm really sure it all runs well without it, either on Linux itself or in a virtual box.

Or merely for this one week every year I get my Anno attack...

 

[LinuxIce]

Yeah that can be done but is tedious. And further the option to select F2/F10/F12/CTRL is available for a very short duration. Most of the users miss that time window. Better to put the GRUB on the disk that has Linux. Not on the disk that has windows, that should not be done.

 

[KGIII]

@Iamgeese, I think you misread their post. They were calling themselves a stupid newbie, not you.

 

[Vektor]

I agree KGIII

That post from Goatmilk sounds like me pointing the finger at myself in the mirror.
I call myself stupid way more than everyone I have ever known combined.

Lets all have fun here, ok.

Vektor

 

[Iamgeese]

I agree KGIII

That post from Goatmilk sounds like me pointing the finger at myself in the mirror.
I call myself stupid way more than everyone I have ever known combined.

Lets all have fun here, ok

Now that you point it out I can see what you mean, but thats not how it looked/felt when looked this morning. I deleted my response.

I am afraid I have had some very grim social media experiences and that caused me to read it the wrong way. I have stopped posting on reddit, facebook or discord. Facebook especially, left one question one day and I got an A4 page entire page of abuse, for no reason, then they attacked me personally (my profile picture), I never posted there ever again, It made me so angry I still think about it years later.

Honestly I have been suprised how civil this site has been compared to any of the others I have seen yet.

 

[Iamgeese]

@Iamgeese, I think you misread their post. They were calling themselves a stupid newbie, not you.

yes, I can see that now