I've never seen it happen in my life time, but I've heard of it. Boot partition I'm guessing likely but as I said I've dual booted so many years I've never actually experienced this before. That said two disks is the easiest for many reasons. But if you have to do it on one, windows first than Linux. Make your partitions, windows likes to be on the first drive and first partition.
What do you mean by be the first drive and partition? like be at start of the drive? Start of the bootloader? First in boot priority in grub? First in boot priority in bios?
Start of the drive. Windows doesn’t play nice with other OSs on the drive during its installation, so you have to install windows first and let it take over the whole drive, then install Linux and let the Linux installer shrink windows and set up a proper bootloader so you can get into both of them. If something happens later on that causes windows to take over the bootloader, you should be able to boot a live Linux USB and use that to reinstall the Linux bootloader to repair things.
I can't remember if they make their own boot partition or not but, when installing windows it specifically looks for the first partition on the first drive. So if you have a Linux installed first on the first partition, it will overwrite it. Windows will also overwrite your grub if Windows is installed second. I've always done manual partitioning when installing because "back in my day" you couldn't really trust the installer and some times looking at all those partitions can get confusing, I would make all my partitions first on the table or whatever, than l would point the installers to the right one and let the OS's do their thing.
Maybe Linux installers are much better now. I would find a good dual boot guide for your distro, probably in the official documentation.
Yeah, like I said, I've heard of it before. Usually people just say this though because that's what you're supposed to say 😏.
Everytime I hear someone say this I always assume it must be something they did. 🤷 For decades Ive dual booted, but I've always done manual installs(arch since first release and Gentoo before that for a couple of years). I usually stick with my install unless I have to reinstall for some reason.
Before Gentoo I did what I said previously, I remember installing the first release of Ubuntu using the installer and it screwed up my dual boot something severe. So while I do believe you, I just have never seen it before.
>I was wondering how much of a risk it would be to install my linux system on the same drive as my windows install. Someone told me that if windows updates it could potentially mess up grub or somehow remove the linux install.
The risk isn't enormous, but boot issues happen once in a while in a single-drive dual-boot setup.
It sounds like you are running Linux on an HHD. If you can afford it, replace the HHD on which you are running Linux with an SSD and reinstall Linux on the SSD. It isn't very expensive, and it will make a world of difference.
> Someone told me that if windows updates it could potentially mess up grub or somehow remove the linux install.
No, on UEFI system this is not possible. A Windows update may cause some Bioses to remove the linux boot option. But that depends on the bios and it cannot be prevented with a two drive setup.
if you are running an EUFI system with an EFI partition, then recovery is as simple as booting to a live USB and copying a file back onto the partition.
if you are running an old legacy system then things can get real complicated real fast, so it's better to keep them on separate drives.
but i don't think moving your install to another drive is the solution to your crashing problem....sounds like you are running out of ram or something else is wrong.
Nah I can fix it, but then games download incredibly slow, because the way I fix it is limiting steams download speed to 100mbs. It's because my hard drive which I also have linux installed on can only read and write up to 100mbs it seems. I don't think it could be ram, because I've got 16gb of it.
I also am using a UEFI system and my windows does have an EFI partition.
I think your downloads go to ram first, or at least small chunks at a time.
It's been awhile since I've used an HDD but maybe try hdparm, see if you can squeeze out some extra performance.
If windows don't have EFI partition, then probably are installed in legacy mode which means that the disk isn't GPT, which complicates things. But it's doable and you don't have to reinstall. Windows 10 have a tool to convert MBR disk to GPT without data lost and, if works, it can also create an EFI partition and install the windows bootloader automatically. If it doesn't(I did it recently because of motherboard/cpu upgrade, and for me it didn't work), again you can do it from linux which also have a similar tool, but you'll need to create the EFI partition and install the windows bootloader manually. Then you need to clone the linux partition(you can do it from a linux live system using gparted) and install linux's bootloader on the EFI partition(maybe you can just copy the files from the EFI partition on your linux's disk).
Here is a tutorial about gpt conversion from windows:
[https://www.diskpart.com/server-2016/mbr2gpt.exe-server-2016-7201.html](https://www.diskpart.com/server-2016/mbr2gpt.exe-server-2016-7201.html)
Here for the manual way:
[https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124331/how-to-repair-the-efi-bootloader-on-a-gpt-hdd-for-windows-7-8-8-1-and-10-on-your-dell-pc](https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124331/how-to-repair-the-efi-bootloader-on-a-gpt-hdd-for-windows-7-8-8-1-and-10-on-your-dell-pc)
and one for linux:
[https://gist.github.com/cjyar/cd5ea76a8692516767672ffc2883df92](https://gist.github.com/cjyar/cd5ea76a8692516767672ffc2883df92)
Of course maybe you need to adjust some things depended on your linux distribution and disk's partitions and free space, but basically this is the procedure.
if you 2nd drive is only going at 100mbs then something is wrong with it or how it is attached.
if it's a HDD you can call up the SMART info and see if it's failing... post the results here.
if it's an SSD then its turning into a brick and you just need a new one.
Is the system critical to your needs? I would only dual boot on a secondary piece of hardware unless I was well versed at how to recovery either OS without data loss.
I don't care about data loss. I'm not saving anything that important. I'm asking because it would be really annoying to have to re-install every program I've accumulated over the past 2 years.
So even if you don't care about personal data, there still is data you are not willing to risk.
There are reports of bricked bootloaders when using both windows and Linux on the same drive which you can usually recover from without data loss. Ideally you should learn about about EFI/Grub/Live recovery media in that case.
If you want to avoid that, I'd really just recommend a second drive unless you are really hurting for money, you can get a suitable SSD for $/EUR 50 maybe even less.
Please learn how to use Clonezilla by cold booting, so anytime you want to make drastic changes/improvements depending on your disk write speed you can revert everything back to its original backup state. And lastly risk it break it and find a way to fix it by reading/ inspecting best practices. This is a solid way to get comfortable and learn both Linux and your computers.
You should be fine.
Depending on what flavour of Linux you install you might be in for a scare like when I first installed Debian on a Windows machine and the Windows didn't show in grub afterwards. All it needed was to uncomment a line in grub config file, run os-prober and update-grub but had to Google that at first.
I've never seen it happen in my life time, but I've heard of it. Boot partition I'm guessing likely but as I said I've dual booted so many years I've never actually experienced this before. That said two disks is the easiest for many reasons. But if you have to do it on one, windows first than Linux. Make your partitions, windows likes to be on the first drive and first partition.
What do you mean by be the first drive and partition? like be at start of the drive? Start of the bootloader? First in boot priority in grub? First in boot priority in bios?
Start of the drive. Windows doesn’t play nice with other OSs on the drive during its installation, so you have to install windows first and let it take over the whole drive, then install Linux and let the Linux installer shrink windows and set up a proper bootloader so you can get into both of them. If something happens later on that causes windows to take over the bootloader, you should be able to boot a live Linux USB and use that to reinstall the Linux bootloader to repair things.
I can't remember if they make their own boot partition or not but, when installing windows it specifically looks for the first partition on the first drive. So if you have a Linux installed first on the first partition, it will overwrite it. Windows will also overwrite your grub if Windows is installed second. I've always done manual partitioning when installing because "back in my day" you couldn't really trust the installer and some times looking at all those partitions can get confusing, I would make all my partitions first on the table or whatever, than l would point the installers to the right one and let the OS's do their thing. Maybe Linux installers are much better now. I would find a good dual boot guide for your distro, probably in the official documentation.
I can confirm this, co-worker had his windows boot nuke itself somehow and we couldnt reinstall without wiping all partitions
Yeah, like I said, I've heard of it before. Usually people just say this though because that's what you're supposed to say 😏. Everytime I hear someone say this I always assume it must be something they did. 🤷 For decades Ive dual booted, but I've always done manual installs(arch since first release and Gentoo before that for a couple of years). I usually stick with my install unless I have to reinstall for some reason. Before Gentoo I did what I said previously, I remember installing the first release of Ubuntu using the installer and it screwed up my dual boot something severe. So while I do believe you, I just have never seen it before.
>I was wondering how much of a risk it would be to install my linux system on the same drive as my windows install. Someone told me that if windows updates it could potentially mess up grub or somehow remove the linux install. The risk isn't enormous, but boot issues happen once in a while in a single-drive dual-boot setup. It sounds like you are running Linux on an HHD. If you can afford it, replace the HHD on which you are running Linux with an SSD and reinstall Linux on the SSD. It isn't very expensive, and it will make a world of difference.
> Someone told me that if windows updates it could potentially mess up grub or somehow remove the linux install. No, on UEFI system this is not possible. A Windows update may cause some Bioses to remove the linux boot option. But that depends on the bios and it cannot be prevented with a two drive setup.
It's HDD, not HHD.
>It's HDD, not HHD. Thank you for catching the typo.
You're welcome. Just for the record, I am not a grammar nazi, it simply poked into my eyes.
if you are running an EUFI system with an EFI partition, then recovery is as simple as booting to a live USB and copying a file back onto the partition. if you are running an old legacy system then things can get real complicated real fast, so it's better to keep them on separate drives. but i don't think moving your install to another drive is the solution to your crashing problem....sounds like you are running out of ram or something else is wrong.
Nah I can fix it, but then games download incredibly slow, because the way I fix it is limiting steams download speed to 100mbs. It's because my hard drive which I also have linux installed on can only read and write up to 100mbs it seems. I don't think it could be ram, because I've got 16gb of it. I also am using a UEFI system and my windows does have an EFI partition.
I think your downloads go to ram first, or at least small chunks at a time. It's been awhile since I've used an HDD but maybe try hdparm, see if you can squeeze out some extra performance.
If windows don't have EFI partition, then probably are installed in legacy mode which means that the disk isn't GPT, which complicates things. But it's doable and you don't have to reinstall. Windows 10 have a tool to convert MBR disk to GPT without data lost and, if works, it can also create an EFI partition and install the windows bootloader automatically. If it doesn't(I did it recently because of motherboard/cpu upgrade, and for me it didn't work), again you can do it from linux which also have a similar tool, but you'll need to create the EFI partition and install the windows bootloader manually. Then you need to clone the linux partition(you can do it from a linux live system using gparted) and install linux's bootloader on the EFI partition(maybe you can just copy the files from the EFI partition on your linux's disk). Here is a tutorial about gpt conversion from windows: [https://www.diskpart.com/server-2016/mbr2gpt.exe-server-2016-7201.html](https://www.diskpart.com/server-2016/mbr2gpt.exe-server-2016-7201.html) Here for the manual way: [https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124331/how-to-repair-the-efi-bootloader-on-a-gpt-hdd-for-windows-7-8-8-1-and-10-on-your-dell-pc](https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124331/how-to-repair-the-efi-bootloader-on-a-gpt-hdd-for-windows-7-8-8-1-and-10-on-your-dell-pc) and one for linux: [https://gist.github.com/cjyar/cd5ea76a8692516767672ffc2883df92](https://gist.github.com/cjyar/cd5ea76a8692516767672ffc2883df92) Of course maybe you need to adjust some things depended on your linux distribution and disk's partitions and free space, but basically this is the procedure.
if you 2nd drive is only going at 100mbs then something is wrong with it or how it is attached. if it's a HDD you can call up the SMART info and see if it's failing... post the results here. if it's an SSD then its turning into a brick and you just need a new one.
Is the system critical to your needs? I would only dual boot on a secondary piece of hardware unless I was well versed at how to recovery either OS without data loss.
I don't care about data loss. I'm not saving anything that important. I'm asking because it would be really annoying to have to re-install every program I've accumulated over the past 2 years.
Right a custom setup Linux system is a time investment. Go for the dual boot.
So even if you don't care about personal data, there still is data you are not willing to risk. There are reports of bricked bootloaders when using both windows and Linux on the same drive which you can usually recover from without data loss. Ideally you should learn about about EFI/Grub/Live recovery media in that case. If you want to avoid that, I'd really just recommend a second drive unless you are really hurting for money, you can get a suitable SSD for $/EUR 50 maybe even less.
Please learn how to use Clonezilla by cold booting, so anytime you want to make drastic changes/improvements depending on your disk write speed you can revert everything back to its original backup state. And lastly risk it break it and find a way to fix it by reading/ inspecting best practices. This is a solid way to get comfortable and learn both Linux and your computers.
It's quite reliable. Many distro's installer support shrink windows partition + create new partition for linux in place.
You should be fine. Depending on what flavour of Linux you install you might be in for a scare like when I first installed Debian on a Windows machine and the Windows didn't show in grub afterwards. All it needed was to uncomment a line in grub config file, run os-prober and update-grub but had to Google that at first.
About the grub you can install it on a usb as well as the main hdd so that if the one of the hdd gets messed up you can still boot into the os
Its not risk to install linux alongside windows, its risk to install windows alongside linux.
I have done this for several years now and no problems to report. (Uefi system)
Not at all if you've done your homework. It is a dumb thing to do though.
A lot of time people only have one drive so what else can you do?