I have two SSD disks and windows is installed on one and I want to install endeavour OS on other. I don’t want to select which OS to start with grub menu but with bios built in option (F8 in my case)
In the past I managed to install kubuntu beside windows like that, but then I also tried to install EOS on third drive but I screw something up and and I got the grub menu to select which OS instead of hitting f8 in start.
Now I want to try this again, I have a fresh windows install on one drive and now I want to install EOS on second. Under “partition” section I have option for “replace a partition” and “erase disk”. What exactly this two options do?
if I select “Replace partition” i can click on a partition and entire space is dedicated to EOS.
if I select “Erase disk” that disk is divided to two partitions => 300MB EFI system and the rest is for EOS + there is small piece of unused space.
Removing windows disk before installing EOS is one option, but I want to avoid it because my PC is not so eady reachable + I need to remove GPU out to get to that NVME disk.
I want to be each OS independent. I remember I had problems years back when windows screwed sometihng with bootloader and I couldn’t boot to linux anymore and one time I also lost the ability to boot to windows because I did something wrong.
Can you disable…
I can’t disable inidividual disks in bios. I can disable NVME, but both disks are NVME.
be very careful
This is the reason I’m asking here because I don’t know exactly how all this work.
IMO each disk needs to have it’s own partition where bootloader is installed, so they don’t mix up.
Choose the disk you want to install EnOS on and do the above. Once installed and booted into EnOS, disable/uninstall os-prober. Like this you will get Grub boot menu to boot into EnOS but not any boot entries for Windows. You could then use your system one-shot boot menu to boot up your Windows.
At the end, I don’t think it makes much sense to do the above since having two separate ESP would practically eliminate the risk of the bootloaders being mixed and messed up.
Years back I had dual boot with ubuntu and windows xp. Something went wrong with windows and I had to use repair function which screwed up mbr and I lost access to ubuntu.
Thanx, I will try it as soon I came home. I don’t mind if there is windows option in grub when I select to boot linux drive, I just need a way to boot in one or other OS if one or other disk dies or one os is corupted or something similar happens
The troublesd you may have had before were probably caused by using an MBR boot (the old way) which sometimes resulted in Windows rewriting it, and could lead to losing Windows access too in some circumstances. There is almost no risk of that happening with UEFI setups, especially with separate ESP partitions on separate disks.
If you really don’t want grub, you could use alternate boot methods for EndeavourOS after the install - such as systemd-boot or even rEFInd (see the wiki for details). Hope this helps - and calms your worries!
Thanx all for help. I managed to install both systems. After installing EOS I have windows in grub menu but I don’t mind it because it’s easier to get to windows and I still have the ability to boot directly to another drive using f8
My current selection is:
What is “fallback initramfs” ? Do I need it? If not, how can I remove it from this menu?
Another thing that confuses me is why on bios boot menu I have 250gb SSD (where EOS is installed) displayed twice? Is the same disk !
Many moons ago, when windows “killed” the mbr, I booted into linux using supergrub2.
Once there reinstall grub.
It was so long ago, that IIRC I booted supergrub2 using a CD
I do keep a usb stick of sysrescue and supergrub2 handy - just in case.
because I don’t know exactly how all this work.
