Hey guys, after 2 years since my last attempt (and recently trying fedora on my laptop) Im ready to try again to install it on my desktop. First time I installed Nobara and it nuked my windows boots partition which caused a lot of trouble and trauma (couldnt boot into windows no matter what). Basically I want to accomplish this:
1- I want to install Fedora on a separate drive and keep my windows drive completely intact (Need it for work).
2- Preferably I would like GRUB to ask which boot option I want to use if my linux drive is set to be my boot drive and to boot straight to windows if its my windows drive set to boot.
Can someone please guide me into installing it the safest way possible?
If you mean different physical drives, I would suggest detatching the drive with the already installed system when installing the second one.
Also, Linux installers may behave differently from one another, so I would suggest testing on another machine if possible, or at least backing up what you cannot afford to lose in the current machine, shrinking the Windows partition with its native partition manager instead, and picking a system whose installer can spot the correct partitions, maybe e.g. Mint with its option to be installed alongside an already installed system, or Endeavour which, from what I remember, can detect empty partitions.
Also if during install, grub is not set up to have both Linux and Windows as start options, there is a grub manager on Linux too, so that can be salvaged.
And lastly, a word of warning, and reiterating a past point, testing something as big as a dual boot in a computer with sensitive and already existing data is playing with fire.
but if I can remove my windows drive then it would be 100% safe right? Its an NVME drive and I think I can disable it in my BIOS, removing it would be a massive pain
Dunno what sort of setup you have, but what I would do, considering my setup and by being a tad on the neurotic side, is to unscrew and detatch any drives but the one to be flashed. This, I think, is the only way to be absolutely sure nothing goes in the wrong place.
I would need to dismantle almost everything and would lose the heatsink past on my nvme too, I will just try disabling it since I dont really see how that would be different from removing, not like the fedora installer can mess with my bios settings no?
Been some years since I last used Fedora, so not able to confirm nor deny anything. Sorry for not being able to help further. =/
Turns out my boot partition was on my other drive somehow (the drive I installed Linux) , am I completely fucked now?
Do you mean your Windows boot partition?
Windows does not support installing the boot partition on a different drive out of the box. Unless you modified your Windows installation, the drive where Windows is installed is also where the Windows boot manager lives.
The biggest risk with installing with the drive connected is accidentally installing the Linux boot partition over the Windows boot partition, hence the usual recommendation to disconnect the drive just to be safe.
You’re gonna have to provide some more details on your setup and what is working/not working though.
It probably got moved when I reinstalled windows after trying nobora years ago. I managed to fix everything but tbh it was way more stressful than it should have been
Seems my motherboard cannot disable nvme, I might try disconnecting it
This should be sufficient. Go for it.