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1y ago

That's why we need two ssds for dual boot

Linux Memes @programming.dev

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178 comments

I have a real simple solution that involves not windows

i use a different drive for my windows installation because that happened to often,
and i swear it once managed to wipe the bootloader on the linux drive.
i have no idea how it did that,
but i avoided starting windows using the grub entry since then.
- Having two drives is sometimes not enough, either. I have no idea why, but anytime Windows installs for the first time or goes through a major update (not the small security patches, but the periodic feature releases) there's a random D20 dice throw to determine if it will randomly decide to create the bootloader and recovery partitions in another drive, even though your main installation isn't there.
  I kid you not, Windows 10 once decided that my external SSD enclosure was the best place to put the bootloader.
  
  This happened to me! Did an update, unplugged my eSATA and BAM! Can't find bootloader. I literally, physically facepalmed when I realized what happened. At least the old one still worked from the primary.
  I've done a ton of Linux updates and this has never happened to me once (yet).

Pfft, even 2 separate ssds for dual booting doesnt stop this from happening to me -___-
On the plus side, this is the first i recall hearing of someone encountering the same issue, so i guess i dont feel as alone now.
- it stopped happening to me after i stopped using the grub entry to boot windows.
  i now use my mainboards boot menu to select the windows entry when i need to boot it
- Windows has a lovely “feature” where it installs the bootloader on a secondary drive if there’s one connected. It doesn’t install it on drive 1 and drive 2, just drive 2. I always disconnect all secondary drives before installing windows for this very reason.
  That said you can configure the windows bootloader to recognize your Linux (or grub) and just use that to manage booting two OSes and it’s less likely to not destroy things.
  
  How can you do that?
- Is that actually easily fixable? Was planning to go dual-boot soon on my laptop and haven't even considered this scenario.
  
  It's relatively quick and easy to fix if you have a live boot Linux usb stick ...and probably a second machine so you can Google what to do. It's just also rather worrying at the time.
  
  My old thinkpads have this great feature where the hard drive is easilly accessible on the side, so I leave the cover off and just swap the drive to boot into a different os
  
  iirc the last time it happened to me, i just needed to fix the uefi entry which wasnt that bad.
  (just remember to have a usb stick with a live image ready)
  if it were to overwrite your bootloader that would be a way harder fix.
  i dont remember if the second ever happend to me
- F

I swear at this point Windows users are collectively victims of Stockholm syndrome.
- Yes, someone please come free us! I am being held hostage by Windows and Autodesk Inventor.
  
  It's the usual problem: if your employer IT refuses to budge, you get locked into a Windows (or Apple) ecosystem. I had the same. My solution was to remove myself from corporate IT, and use my own device.
  I use workarounds for the interfaces with corporate:
  MS Teams Linux client (sadly discontinued as of 2022) still works out of a jail, but the browser solution is also tested and ready as backup should I be forced
  Webmail instead of a proper mail proram - that's a big trade-off, but I can work with it, as much as it sucks
  Webex for conferencing (as it works properly with Firefox, contrary to many other solutions)
  Web portals continue to work - even though sometimes I need a user agent switcher to pretend I am using chrome (fuck you @MS Teams)
- Or Nvidia GPU owners because Nvidia is fine on Windows but sucks on Linux.
  
  On windows they make you install their annoying software to do driver updates and it sends random notifications and has a bunch of ads and other things I don't want when installing software.
  
  I'm using kde5 on X. To my knowledge, the only issues you might have with Nvidia on Linux is if you want to use Wayland instead of X. Unless you are someone who refuses to use non-free drivers for philosophical reasons, but then you wouldn't be using Windows.
  I've been running an Nvidia GPU for over 6 years now on Linux without issues.
  I even am using a fairly recent 4070ti and was able to use it with proprietary drivers soon after launch and was running cyberpunk 2077 at 4k with high settings and ray tracing with an average 60fps with dsr.
  I also use the cuda cores for running open source llms locally and have no issues there either.
- Hot take, windows isn't that bad (privacy issues aside).
  
  It actually is worse than "that bad". Windows 2000 wasn't "that bad" - everything after that has gone downhill.
  Objective reasons why Windows is extremely shitty:
  with every new Windows version, the same settings are shuffled around and users have to re-learn the interfaces to find stuff they had been able to easily find before
  bloatware
  tons of software is shoved down your throat with opt-out options either not available, or you have to jump through literal hoops to get there
  
  It's always funny to me when people defend something by saying that it's "not that bad", because that still acknowledges that it is bad.
  
  I always say, an OS is a tool, not a religion. I use Linux at home 98% of the time because it fits what I need to do and it's snappier than Windows on my hardware and gives me more control, or maybe I know better how to do certain things in Linux nowadays that I've left Windows mostly behind. I use Windows at work because that's what dictated, and also because MS Visio is only on Windows (I could use MacOS with Omnigraffle, but Macs are not available at my pay grade. Whatever). They pay me to work and be productive, and this means using Outlook/Teams, AD SSO integration with Edge, all the VPNs/network control/DLP agents. And luckily now I can use Linux subsystem in Windows, so I can work on the cli when I need to do something fancy. They don't pay me to spend hours trying to find a way to work with their systems other than what's supported.
  On the topic at hand (bootloader issues). Never had a problem personally, but Iast time I did proper dual booting (on the same drive) was with Windows8.1. Now I have different drives, with the bios configured to boot from the drive with Linux. If I want to boot on Windows 10 I actually have to change the boot sequence. And even then there is grub (from an old dual boot setup).

Picture this: you buy a car. You buy a new set of wheels/rims and a new radio system with Android and whatever. You also put some new carpets on the floor of the car. Now you need to take it for a simple routine maintenance and checkup at the car brand official shop. After a few hours you go back there to pick you car up and it has the stock wheels, stock radio, stock carpets and everything and you ask where the hell is your stuff and ALL of them on the shop look at you confused like if they never seen any different accessory on that car before other than the stock ones, or don't know what you are talking about. All they know is that the car is now "according to spec".
This is what it feels like after updating Windows with Linux in dual-boot on the same drive.

It's at least gotten a bit better.
There was a time when Photoshop and other programs used a copy-protection scheme that overwrote parts of grub, causing the user not to be able to boot Linux or Windows.
They knew about it, and just DGAF. I don't remember their exact FAQ response, but it was something along the lines of "Photoshop is incompatible with GRUB. Don't dual boot if you use Photoshop."
Grub still has code for BIOS based installs that uses reed-solomon error correction at boot time to allow grub to continue to function even if parts of its core.img were clobbered by shitty copy protection schemes for Windows software.

Template
- Do you happen to know where it's from?
  
  Zombieland Saga.
  Zombie girls are brought together to make an idol group by a sadistic madman who abuses the shit out of them.
  Edit, the scene in question

With UEFI it’s waaayyyy less bad than it used to be. There is no more MBR in the traditional sense for windows to clobber. Windows and Linux can share an UEFI boot partition both dropping in their appropriate boot binaries.
Even if you install Linux and Windows on separate devices, unless you do something strange they will share the same UEFI boot partition.
- Personally, I do 2 separate UEFI boot partitions. Grub is the default which can select the windows boot partition. Then Windows can do whatever it wants to it's own boot partition.
- Man, when I first messed around with Linux I hosed the MBR more times than I can remember. Either through Windows smashing it with an update, or my dumb ass doing stupid shit in gparted.
  Pretty sure I was able to recover the important files somehow, but my parents banished me to the old family desktop for that pretty quick.
  
  Me too. Lol. It was almost a right of passage for people at the time.
- By something strange, I assume you mean installing Windows on a disk with the other disks disconnected so Windows will create its EFI partition on that disk (since it's dumb and will create EFI partition on the first disk it finds, even if it's an HDD). Though UEFI doesn't mind, will still list all the bootloaders from different disks without any problems. You can even unplug and plug them as you wish, it still won't be corrupted this way.

install windows
adjust main partition so you have space for Linux
install linux, during install create anither efi partition, and root partition.
linux probes foreign OS (some distros might not) and creates a chainloader entry from your new EFI to Windows EFI
set BIOS to boot from linux EFI
Windows never knows the other partition exists and leaves it intact.
- Could you give me more detail for step 3?
  
  Don't even have to do that. Install windows first, then install Linux with refind bootloader on preferably a separate disk. Done
  
  Yes. When you install Linux it will auto detect the Windows EFI partition and put boot stuff there by default, but then windows comes along and will randomly trash that setup. So during install don't go with the suggested option, instead use the partitioning tool to creat another small EFI boot partition elswhere on disk, leaving Windows EFI and OS paetitions as is. Also create your root and home partition(s). Install to those partitions, then Linux should prompt for Probe Foreign OS and add a chainloader entry to your grub menu. This entry, when selected, points grub to windows EFI partition ID and hands off the boot process to Windows. Windows is unaware it has been chainloaded. As long as you set BIOS to load directly from the LINUX EFI entry then you will boot to Grub with Linux/Windows Dual option...But technically it is not a true Dual Boot, it is a sequential boot I guess. I have had this for 7 years on same install and boot between W10 and Linux daily. Windows has never touched my Linux EFI.

I have power switches for my drives. If I want to boot into windows, I turn that one on and the others off.
- That's a really awesome idea. If I ever need an actual Windows install I'm totally going that route!
- how do you do that ? physical switches ? do you buy them separately and solder them ? where ?
  
  It's a physical switch board like this
  https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Optimized-Controls-Provide-Longevity/dp/B00TZR3E70

Hear me out: Class action lawsuit
- Heard you and that wouldn’t fly. Just like you’re not supposed to run Windows on mission critical systems like nuclear reactors (seriously, check the EULA), running multiple operating systems side by side is most likely out of a supported configuration and “use at your own risk”. You’d have zero standing or less for any sort of lawsuit.
  
  But just because it is in the EULA doesn't make it legal. At a time where big tech is being kept under a microscope for antitrust regulation, I'd say that an OS that actively destroys other competing OSes on the machine it is installed on should be considered an unfair anti-competitor tactic.

If I dual boot windows, I tend to disconnect my Linux drive any time I do anything on the Windows side. Even installing Windows fresh using default settings, it managed to completely erase my Linux disk to put the Windows bootloader on it even though I selected a completely different disk for the Windows OS. Won't be making that mistake again. And by mistake I mean dual booting Windows. That pile of spaghetti code gets a VM.
- windows installing its bootloader on a completely separate drive is such a weird and fucking idiotic issue for it to have.
- I got used to windows overwriting the MBR and could generally work around that. But the last time I tried windows/Linux dual boot, it was windows that got caught in a recovery loop after a windows update. Linux was fine. I was impressed at how thoroughly Windows had killed itself on a basic unmolested install. At that point I decided I was done with windows on bare metal unless it was the only thing running. Windows goes in the virtual sandbox or plays by itself.
- ... on a proxmox host in another room.

Two ssds is when you need to run stuff on windows that requires the bare metal.
Windows needs to be contained, controlled and told who is the boss, I suggest using Tiny11 or MicroXP in a VM for stuff that can't run in wine.
- MicroXP!? What year is it!?
  
  Firefox stopped supporting XP in 2018 so it's not too long ago that it was still usable.
- Micro xp... I got that to run on a Intel 400mhz laptop with 32mb of mainboard soldered sdram chips. Nothing like a a operating system under 200mb installed with a GUI.

Windows actually works better in a vm on Linux than on bare metal. And it's got a much smaller chance of breaking my PC that way too.
- Linux actually works better inside WSL in Windows.
  
  Nooooooo!!!!
  
  🤮
  
  This is dangerous misinformation.
  
  Linux running inside WSL on Windows is the only thing that makes Windows usable.

For the rare occasion that I need Windows bare metal, I have a Windows 11 installation on a usb ssd originally installed via the Rufus Windows-To-Go option that I can just plug into the system and boot off it whenever I need it without it touching my uefi menu or partition on my internal drives. This way I can also use it on another machine if that need arises. Windows can even trim the usb drive it's running on. It pretty much works as if installed internally.

That's why we need two ssds for dual boot
And one day, we will have updates that will tell us "Windows have fixed a drive with partition table issues."
- Don't wait for that day. Unplug all secondaries before booting into Win

Best is when it messes up it's own bootloader at the same time lol.

Remember kids, if you're gonna dual boot, stay safe, use 2 drives, and pray you're fast enough to mash the boot menu button when you power on.
- I just use rEFInd with auto discover turned on. I installed the windows bootloader onto my Linux boot partition and haven't had any issues with Windows overwriting my boot entries on update.
- Just press and hold the button as the computer boots!
  
  Or just set your BIOS to take you to the boot menu on startup so you don't have to pound keys like a barbarian.
- Don't forget to wrap it before you stick it in.

Ugh, that's so annoying. Every time windows updates i have to open the BIOS and put ubuntu first on the boot order so it doesn't skip grub.
I Also have a drive that i can access on both linux and Windows and every so often Windows will make it inaccessible on Linux because it didn't fully unmount the drive.
- It's crazy that the OS has access to the BIOS in a R/W mode at all. Gaping security hole.

Finally another beeing experiencing this issue..i wiped windows after this incident and never looked back
- I think their logic behind this complete bullshit is if they make it hard enough on you to dual boot, you'll just stick with windows. I switched over a year ago, never looking back and seeing posts like this one makes me feel even better about it.

Windows managed to brick itself when I booted for the first time in a month. I only wanted it for the Karafun app, but I guess I can live without it.

Just use rEFInd to easily overcome bootloader coups

I haven't used my Windows drive in almost a year now, Thinking about throwing another distro on there right now.
- I went out and bought a very cheap external SSD. Windows is not touching my physical hardware on the bare metal.
  
  its possible to use windows on a external drive?

Never trusted this setup to begin with because I didn't trust Microsoft and I'm not all that capable or want to take time to sort this stuff out on a regular basis.
So I just setup my ThinkPad laptop with two removable SSDs and I just swap one or the other whenever I need. The drive is easily switched, from power down, remove drive, insert other drive and restart only takes about two minutes.
I'm not going to risk messing up my setup because two operating systems can't work with one another.
Besides I seldom switch, I use Windows if I really have to about three or four times a year.
- Wine won’t work?
  
  I really wish Excel would work on wine. It's the only reason I do occasionally fire up windows on my duel boot. (And no the open source / browser based spreadsheet options don't always suffice, brilliant as they are).

For me its the opposite, Linux always boots fine but occasionally a linux system update will break the Windows boot option in systemd-boot

This is why I don't dual-boot.
- Only reason I keep a Windows install on an SSD for my laptop: my schools remote test proctoring service only works with Windows and Mac. I normally run pop_os on it but switch to the windows when I have to take a test.

At least 2 SSD is a 100% safe protection.
If only ...
- That's what I use? Am I in the clear?
  
  That's what I'm doing too, running fine but when I reinstall windows for whatever reason (mainly for it being slow and buggy) I disconnect linux drive because one time it broke my grub by messing with efi partition (nothing unrepairable but annoying at least)

i need to remove my windows boot drive from my workstation, but it lives in a rack. And has a temperament. Sometimes when losing power shit just refuses to boot for like an hour, eventually it randomly boots. Still unsure why. Could be anything really. Best guess is bad cmos battery though. Could be slightly bunged bios, could be marginally fucky cpu. Who knows. It's fine when shutdown with power for long periods of time though.
Gotta love modern hardware, if only 7 segment displays weren't a 300 dollar privilege.

just leave a grub floppy in the machine and boot from there, you won't even notice.
- This hit me hard. I remember doing something like this 😅
  
  Me too. I remember putting a PXE loader on a floppy... and it being the best idea in that mess of a plan that I've had...

I have three ssd and none of them boot windows. I do have a windows vm (and macos too) in virt-manager in case I need it, but I haven't boot them for about a year.

I have an old, spinning rust WinBlows, easily inserted in the ex-cdrom slot of my bathtub movie lenovo t440p, because once a year or so I need to upgrade the firmware of some crap that has no other option. Wastes about 24 hrs of (annoying but small) power updating each time. May this pass, in time. (like tears in rain :)
I should get around to imaging it onto a SSD, but I don't, due to distaste, and then I need it again. :(.

Both my drives are the same Linux distro, I have Windows and MacOS in a VM when I need them, and Windows To Go for rare cases where I actually need to boot win11.
- isn't WTG dead?
  
  Rufus allows you to create a bootable Windows 11 To Go drive

I gotta give dual booting a shot. I need windows for my college's crappy exam software, but I also can't afford another laptop just for Linux
- I just use a VM for windows apps that don't work through wine
  
  I haven't had to use any exam software recently, but in the past when I did I remember reading that it can detect when the host is virtual and will not run in a VM. Fortunately at the time I still had a windows laptop lying around, but I'd have a real problem if one of a courses now tried to do this.
- It’s worth it lol, though watch out you may find yourself dreading opening windows

I just put Windows in a VM, if I bother at all.
- I just put Windows in a quarantine, if I bother at all.

Don't use windows
- Unfortunately, Linux can't run everything *yet. What do you propose people do instead when they can't access the apps they need to play with friends or work?
  
  VM, I run Virtualbox in full screen on a second monitor for my work stuff. Works great.
  
  Embrace freedom, change the habits, eat the rich!! /s

I have yet to have this happen to me lol.

I have to use Windows for work, so this is how I got it setup and MS still makes it difficult with updates lol.

Dual boot issues like this is why I stopped using windows not in a VM.

I have two ssds for raid1 boot,it's very nice
just wish my bios would stop making phantom uefi boot entries every boot

i have two other possibilities at hand, that do not involve two SSDs:
don't use intentionally broken software in the first place ;-)
use another device for bootloader, could be a readonly CD or a usb drive, PXE/bootp could also do it.
And if your company wants you to use rotten software, they also want you to give them the delays, downtimes and annoyances that naturally come with rotten decisions, just keep that in mind.
Here is one thing to remember and why i call it rotten software and rotten decisions:
Microsoft offers a free "blame the ransomware people" to any CTO who just wants to receive money without working at all or not having to "think" during work. That same CTO can get a bonus after "solving" the ransomware issue and then: "look how 'invaluable' that CTO is to the company" he "worked" for month ( yelling at engineers he previously told to install rotten software???) and resolved the ransomware issue!! This is same to those who work. no law has ever given people that many payed breaks from work as "rotten software" vendors did. and if you made a mistake and did not get trained before, you could blame bot beeing trained.
Look at it from a "fingerpointer" point of view, one cloud always blame someone else for everything and the only one to blame is too big to fail and also untouchable due to their army of darkness lawyers. thus anything happened? no one could be guilty AND be held responsible. Also if one is slow at work, and so is his OS, obviously easy to blame someone else again.
so microsoft offers a "solution" to "boss wants you to work more and quicker" but remember, that same boss only "needs" a cover for his own ass to be able to point to someone else and the ones creating the rotten software do deliver that ;-)
i do not know any better wording for such a situation than "rotten" thus i name it so.

Secure boot Linux bootloader Kernel update

Bad post, contains anime
- I think you mean good post. Linux + Anime + Programming = GG.

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