Windows & Linux: Dual Drive Dual Boot

foreign [Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time I'm going to explain how to set up a dual boot system with Windows on OneDrive Linux on another and the BIOS boot menu used to select between them this kind of configuration doesn't rely on a GRUB boot menu and is my own Preferred Choice when setting up a dual boot system so let's go and see how and why I dual boot in this fashion here we have the ryzen 5 computer that I built in a recent video this is currently a single drive system with Windows 11 installed and the Samsung m.2 SSD so if we go across to the PCS video output and turn on the power the system will boot directly into windows in a minute I'm going to add a second SATA drive to the computer so I can demonstrate two methods for setting up a dual Drive dual boot but before we do that let's go through the process of setting up a single Drive dual boot as a useful comparison and just before we do this I'd note that before setting up any kind of dual boot you need to make sure that your system is backed up and I'm also going to assume you already have windows installed and want to add Linux as a second operating system to do this you'll need to have downloaded an ISO file for your chosen Linux distro and to have written it to a bootable USB drive using a program such as Rufus or etcher here I've already prepared a bootable USB drive containing Linux Mint so let's plug our Linux Mint drive into our system and reboot the computer as it comes up again I'll use the magic of filmmaking to pause the boot sequence so we can clearly see that on this system we can press delete to enter the BIOS or F12 to access the boot menu next let's start time running again and press F12 to enter the boot menu these can get confusing these days as they may list as here both physical drives here are Samsung Evo SSD and also our Corsair Voyager USB drive and as well as listing the physical drives we can also see the software bootloaders installed on them here windows and here what's labeled uafi Corsair Voyager 3.000a which here is Linux Mint so I'll select this option and the computer will now boot into a live version of Linux Mint running from a USB drive and here we are the look splint has come up and just to make things easier to see on video I'm now going to make a couple of scaling changes and with that done let's Now launch the Linux Mint installer because this video is about dual booting rather than General Linux installation I'm going to fast forward through all parts of the installers I show in this video except for the sections related to dual boot talk of which we've now arrived at the installation type screen here in Linux Mint and as we can see we've got a number of options the first is to install Linux Mint alongside the Windows boot manager in other words this will set up a single Drive dual boot the other options are to eraser disk and just have them that's been installed or was there something else option we'll be looking at later but here as I'm first showing you the single Drive dual boot method we'll stick with this first option and continue next we have a choice to make which is how much space to allocate to Linux Mint compared to Windows and at the moment it's given a lot of space at Linux Mint but we could drag this thing in the middle to give for example less space to Linux Mint with things set up like this all we now have to do is to click on install and of course it checks we really want to do this yes we do and it checks again because this is really serious we'll again click on continue and and now fast forward through the rest of the installer and there we are it's finished so let's test this out by pressing restart now and Linux Mint remind us to remove our USB drive so if we now press enter the system will reboot and should show us a globe boot menu there it is and as you can see we can select here between Linux Mint which is the the top option there it would go to that by default or we could go into windows and after setting one of these up I always test Windows first because that's the kind of person I am so let's go down to Windows boot manager and press enter to boot into windows and that seems to have worked Windows is looking as lovely as windows are ever can but if we now restart and this time on the grub menu we will leave it on the links mint you can see at the bottom of the screen there's a timer we could just press enter for Linux Mint but I'll allow the timer to complete there it goes and it'll now boot into Linux Mint yes and there we are it's showing the first boot thing because obviously it's the first boot we'll get rid of that but uh basically we've got our single Drive dual boot system and this means we can now run Windows or Linux on this computer with each of the operating systems having full access to the hardware and this would not be the case if for example we were running Windows or Linux in a virtual machine however there are some disadvantages let's just reboot the system again and here we are back on the GRUB boot menu and I'll just press the down arrow to go down to Windows to stop the timer and the first disadvantage I can note here is that a single Drive dual boot setup does slow down the process of booting into Windows as the GRUB boot menu always boots up before windows or Linux and as we can see here Windows is not actually set as the default here you could edit this menu if you mess around but however we look at this our access to Windows has been a little degraded by this setup secondly as we saw in the installer we've inevitably lost some space on our Windows system drive because we've given it to Linux more seriously if we decide we no longer want Linux on this computer we may have an interesting time removing the GRUB boot menu from our Windows system Drive and even more fundamentally whilst everything here is working just fine we could select Linux or Windows it is possible for this GRUB boot menu to become corrupted so for example a major Windows update can corrupt the GRUB boot menu leaving you unable to access Windows or Linux unless you're able to implement a technical fix and so for these last two reasons in particular you may want to avoid a single Drive dual boot right I've now returned the PC to its previous state with only windows installed and if we boot it up it goes straight into windows but let's Now set up a dual Drive dual boot and there are two ways to do this one of which requires more messing around with hardware and the other with software and we'll start with the more Hardware Centric method first let's shut down the PC and with the power turned off I'm going to take this Kingston SSD which we're going to use as our Linux drive and I'm going to connect it up with a saturated cable and Power next I'm going to temporarily remove the m.2 SSD on which Windows is installed there we go so now the only drive connected is the one on which we're going to install Linux note that if you have windows installed on a two and a half inch Sasa drive you could disconnect the drive by removing either its saturated cable or its power cable or both but whatever you do the key thing is that we now have the drive on which we're going to install Linux connected but the drive on which Windows has installed temporarily disconnected next we'll plug in our Linux Mint USB drive and power up the PC and I'm going to press F12 to access this machine's boot menu where we can see clearly we've got USB drive available we've also got our Kingston SSD I've just connected but we don't have our Windows drive so we know that the Windows driver has definitely been disconnected from this computer so let's boot from the USB drive and start Linux Mint and as last time now we've arrived on the desktop I'm going to make a few scaling changes after which we'll run up the installer and fast forward on to this point to installation type and I think I should point out here that this is what we see in Linux Mint but you'll see a slightly different screen with similar options in other distros but if we come back here to Linux Mint you can see our installation type this time around is limited to either a raised disk and install Linux Mint or do something else there's no option here to install alongside Windows because our Windows Drive isn't connected so Linux aren't detect it and indeed if you can see an option here for installing alongside Windows you haven't disconnected your windows drive you need to quit out of this shut down the system disconnect the drive and then run up to get back to this point anyway here we are where we can now press install now and then confirm what we're doing and I point out that here the drive we're using is completely blank it's in a factory station if you just got it at the packet as a new drive if your drive isn't in that state do be aware that installing Linux on it will delete everything on the drive and Linux will probably ask several times for you to confirm you really want to do this but with a decision made an Linux being installed we'll fast forward through the rest of the installer and there we are it's finished so if we now restart the computer remove our USB drive and the Machine should now boot into Linux Mint and it does so Linux Mint has been installed on my two and a half inch SSD but what about Windows well the next I'm going to do is to close down the system and also turn off the power and it's now time to put our Windows SSD back into the computer there we go or if you have Windows on a two and a half inch SSD at this point you need to reconnect it SATA and or power cable and with this done we can turn the computer back on boot up the system and I'm going to press F12 on this computer to access the BIOS boot menu where as you can see we now have the option to select windows or Linux it actually shows Ubuntu here because Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu but we know that is Linux Mint but initially I'm going to test Windows still work so we'll click on Windows and yes here we are back in Windows 11. we've still got windows on the system and if we want to access Linux we can do that as well as I'm sure you would guess we can just do a restart press F12 for the BIOS boot menu and we could here now select to Ubuntu which we know is Linux Mint and I think I'll get rid of this dialogue popping up every time we do this and in fact let's do another reboot and this time I'm not going to select the boot menu we'll just do a straight restart and let it run through where by default the machine has booted into windows so we only have to use the F12 key to access the BIOS boot menu on boot if we want to boot to Linux rather than Windows however you might want things the other way around so let's do a final reboot let's restart yet again and this time I'm pressing the delete key to go into the BIOS and if we move across here at the top we go along to boot you can see we've got boot option priorities the first one here is Windows the second is Linux labeled as Ubuntu but that is Linux Mint but if we wanted to boot by default into Linux and access Windows via the BIOS boot menu we could change this around we could go boot option number one enter we could set that here to Ubuntu like that Windows would move to number two that's not what I want here I'm going to put that back to Windows and if I now save and exit setup like that there we go we know that this machine will boot directly back into windows and do note here we're not seeing the GRUB boot menu because it's not installed on the Windows Drive and a final thing to note is if we no longer want to use Linux on this system we can simply remove the Linux SSD and the PC will return to having a single operating system with Windows completely undisturbed we've just set up a PC with Windows on its first SSD Linux on its second and the GRUB boot menu also on the second so that it doesn't interfere with Windows and we achieved this by removing the windows Drive during the Linux installation however if you don't want to remove the Windows drive it's possible to achieve the same result using the Linux installer to demonstrate I've returned the second SSD to factory state which I did using the disk part command that I've covered in another video I've also inserted our Linux Mint USB drive so in the Bios boot menu we can see our Samsung and Kingston ssds with Linux no longer installed on the Kingston Drive and we've also got here our USB drive so let's boot into Linux from the USB and as usual I'll do some scaling and then we'll go on up the installer and here we now have the option to install Linux alongside Windows which would place it on our first SSD with a glove boot menu as we saw earlier and we also have the option still to erase disk and install Linux Mint which disk of course would have to be determined and we've also got something else so that we can install Linux on the second SSD with its pesky GRUB boot menu also on that drive and as previous I'd point out what we're going to see here is what you'll see in Linux Mint it'll look slightly different in other Linux distros but the printables will be the same so let's continue and we can see by default we'll be installing to the nvme SSD the one with Windows on it and we'll be putting the bootloader including the GRUB boot menu also onto that Samsung SSD or Windows drive and of course we don't want to do that so let's straight away change where we're going to put the bootloader to the Kingston SSD there which we can see is SDA and if we now also go up here and we scroll down we can find SDA we've got an SDA an auto and sdb sdb is the flash drive we're booting from here but we want SDA so we'll go up to there SDA is our Kingston Drive like that but we can't click on install straight away you'll see install now is grayed out because we need to create a root partition so we'll go to the free space we have on this drive and click that like that we're going to mount at the root which is down there like that and okay for some reason the screen moves around again but never mind we can go back to uh there we are select SDA and you'll see now we can click on install now so let's do that and this usually it checks to see if things are okay which they are so it will continue and again I'll fast forward through the installer and here we are once again it's completed so we will restart now and remove our USB drive and in theory we now have Linux Mint and it's bootloader and GRUB boot menu on the Kingston SSD and there's a computer reboot I'm going to press the delete key to take us into the BIOS because I strongly suspect if we look in boot that yes the Lexus set itself as a first boot option I'm going to change that back to Windows like that the alerts can be second and will now save and exit and that the machine reboot and I'm hoping we will now boot directly into Windows without seeing a glove boot menu and it does indeed look like this is going to be the case it is isn't it great how occasionally we're actually happy to see windows anyway what about the necktex tester is working as well so let's now reboot and hit that F12 to bring up the BIOS boot menu here we are and yes we've got Ubuntu available as well as Windows and Ubuntu is listed against the Samsung SSD even though we didn't put the Linux bootloader on this drive part of grub was still placed there by Linux because it could see the drive and this is why I always prefer to set up a dual boot by removing the windows Drive relevant doing the method we've just gone through but this will still work let's click on Ubuntu there and it'll Now bring up a GRUB boot menu which includes Windows as well as Linux because of course the installer could see Windows because we didn't disconnect the drive but anyway Let's uh boot into Linux and here we are our final welcome to Linux Mint screen in my experience dual Drive dual boot systems are very reliable and more so than single Drive dual boots which rely the GRUB boot menu which can become corrupted so if you need access to two operating systems and a virtual machine doesn't beat your requirements then a dual Drive dual boot is well worth considering this said Please be aware that no form of dual boot is without its risks so never set one up of any kind until you've backed everything up and you're fully aware of the risks you are prepared to accept the consequences but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed but you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 348,733

Keywords: dual boot, dual drive dual boot, dual boot without GRUB, GRUB dual boot, GRUB boot problems, Linux dual boot, Windows dual boot, multi drive boot, dual boot tutorial, Christopher Barnatt, Linux Mint

Id: KWVte9WGxGE

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023