This is not my first install of EndeavourOS, but it will be my first time dual booting with Windows 11. On my previous install with an older laptop I completely erased the disk during install; on this install, it’s important to me that everything on the Windows install remains intact because I run almost everything work-wise on it.
I attempted to partition 100GB of free space using Windows’ built-in drive management to make it easier to install Endeavour alongside it. When I tried to do this, Windows could only find 456MB of space that could be shrunk; the free space on this SSD is well over 300GB.
I tried optimizing the drive, again using Windows built-in tools, but to no avail; the drive is Bitlocker protected and I also tried both of these steps after disabling the encryption, again no increase in shrinkable size.
TL;DR: can I trust EOS to partition a 100GB space on the main C drive without corrupting or damaging any files if Windows drive management only recognized 400MB of shrinkable space due to unmoveable files?
*Edit: upon further inspection the unmoveable file is $MFT.
*Edit 2: I have also tried using defraggler to move these files during boot-up, and nothing was changed on the drive.
Short answer yes it can be setup this way. But you really shouldn’t. Microsoft is not very nice to other OS’s and WHEN Microsoft Decides to update it’s boot loader it will remove your Linux Boot Entry’s. Something one should consider before dual booting on the same device.
Since this drive is encrypted with Bitlocker I’m not sure how that will work with Linux. Bitlocker is newer than my switch over to Linux so I know nothing about it. Maybe someone who actually uses Windows can chime in.
I think you can disable bitlocker on Windows, install linux and then re-enable it? But i would verify that that is possible first before doing it.
Edit: According to Ai but i can’t confirm.
To install Linux on a Windows machine with BitLocker enabled, you must first disable BitLocker before proceeding with the Linux installation, and then you can re-enable BitLocker once Linux is set up; however, remember to back up your BitLocker recovery key before disabling it as you will need it to re-enable encryption later.
One way to test and study dual boot setup is to install in a virtual machine. A virtual machine requires a good amount of RAM and disk space on the machine though.
So you can install Windows into a VM first. Then, in the VM, use the tools in Windows to shrink the Windows partition to make room for EndeavourOS. Then install EndeavourOS.
Note that the VM may need to be set up to use EFI instead of legacy BIOS (depending on what you want to test). Also, the EFI partition needs to be large enough (about 1-2 GB) in order to accomodate all required stuff with systemd-boot.
(Or, you might simply want to install EndeavourOS to a VM. This is maybe the easiest and least error prone way, although it doesn’t run EndeavourOS at its full potential.)
If your system has the slot, and you can afford another disk, install EOS on the second disk and set that disk as the primary boot option in the BIOS. This avoids almost all the shard disk risks. But be aware that Windows updates may cause the default boot device to change if it can update the BIOS firmware.
I can neither confirm nor deny that a Linux installation has eaten my whole disk when it promised to only eat the partition I gave it. I really couldn’t say with absolute certainty that I didn’t do anything incorrectly (or not). Everything is possible, especially hasty action and ‘I thought I did it right’.
After looking at everything again, I decided on getting a flash drive to run EOS on instead of trying to partition a spot on my internal drive. I’m loving this solution! The drive is quick enough to load everything almost as quickly as if it were running on internal storage, and I get to keep everything separate. Plus, I can easily set this desktop up on any computer I use! It’s not the solution I was looking for, but it ended up being a great alternative.
