This post is more than 5 years old
3 Posts
0
4541
February 3rd, 2018 16:00
Windows and Linux on different disks ?
Hello,
I just got an Inspiron 7577 with Windows 10 installed on the m2-pcie drive and I would like to install Ubuntu on the second SATA drive.
I want when the computer boots, to have automatically the option to chose between the drives, so I can select the OS I want.
I don’t want both OS’s on the same drive.
I just need something like a boot menu to select the boot disk (even an external usb stick) with a timer to go to a selected option if no selection made.
Is this possible and how I can do this ?
I just got an Inspiron 7577 with Windows 10 installed on the m2-pcie drive and I would like to install Ubuntu on the second SATA drive.
I want when the computer boots, to have automatically the option to chose between the drives, so I can select the OS I want.
I don’t want both OS’s on the same drive.
I just need something like a boot menu to select the boot disk (even an external usb stick) with a timer to go to a selected option if no selection made.
Is this possible and how I can do this ?
jphughan
9 Legend
•
14K Posts
1
February 4th, 2018 06:00
The BIOS will see both disks as bootable, but I've never seen any system that had an option to show the motherboard boot menu automatically at every boot. Instead, you just choose the boot priority of your available devices and the motherboard will always boot from the first available device -- unless you press F12 to manually choose a different device, such as when you want to boot from USB. I agree that having motherboard-level support for always showing the boot menu could be convenient for your use case though, perhaps with a countdown to boot to the highest priority boot device automatically if you don't select anything. I'm betting the reason it isn't offered is because a) that is already done by the bootloaders that the motherboard itself loads, such as Windows Boot Manager and GRUB2, although of course making those work often involves more setup, and b) dual booting is still a fairly rare setup overall. Good luck!
jphughan
9 Legend
•
14K Posts
1
February 3rd, 2018 18:00
If they'll be on two different disks and you install both OSes in UEFI mode, then the UEFI firmware will detect the bootloaders on both disks and list both of them in its firmware. That means that at any given time you'll be able to press F12 while the system is loading to choose which bootloader you want to load, and you can rearrange the boot order in the BIOS to put the OS you plan to use more frequently at the top of the boot order so that the system defaults to it. If you want to see a menu EVERY time you boot, there isn't a way to have the system firmware to do that, so you would have to configure either the Windows or Linux bootloader itself to be aware of the other OS and offer it as an option, then configure the system to always boot to that bootloader so the menu appears. I know that some Linux installers like Ubuntu give you the option to dual boot with Windows, so if you already have Windows installed before you start installing Linux, you should see that option, and then I think the Linux bootloader will give you a choice every time it starts, so you'd then want to place the Linux bootloader at the top of your BIOS boot list. However, I've never done this on two separate disks, so it may work differently. You may end up having to do some manual work with the Linux bootloader (GRUB2). I'm not sure it's even possible to have the Windows bootloader offer Linux as an option fyi, so I would focus on getting the Linux bootloader to be aware of Windows.
Fan7577
3 Posts
0
February 4th, 2018 01:00
Ok, that’s acceptable, not what I want, but I don’t thing I can manage to configure grub. I have never done that before, so I guess I have to try and post the results.
I was just hopping that this process was automatic, so the bios recognizes the different disks that have a bootable OS and gives you the option to choose without pressing F12. Sometimes I may also want to boot from an external usb stick.
Fan7577
3 Posts
0
February 4th, 2018 07:00
I can confirm that everything works OK, thus windows 10 on first disk and Ubuntu on the second disk, completely separated. So if I remove either disk, the other works fine.
I have set the order in the bios and I boot windows 10 as default, if I don’t press f12.
Now i’ll Do some research, for educational purposes only, to see if I can force a boot menu from Linux. I think I have seen something in Ubuntu forums and i’ll Give it a try.
But in general case closed. Thanks again.
Rednroll
40 Posts
0
February 4th, 2018 09:00
Instead of the dual boot system, you may want to consider setting up a virtual machine instead.
You could either upgrade to Win10 Pro which supports Hyper Visor (aka Hyper V) or install VMware on Win10 home.
Dual boot machines can be a pain to manage and go back and forth between OSes. With a virtual machine, you get the same options but is much more flexible in my opinion.
There's a lot of how to videos on Youtube which describes configuring virtual machines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTYuNdUrRuw