Dual Booting with SSD

February 7, 2017

Anyone dual booting with a SSD I am thinking of installing one, just for the OS's. I want to dual boot Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.1 and Windows 10 Home. Anyone in the forum done it? What about drivers? I want to use the SSD as my boot drive for the OS's and a ata sata drive to store stuff on. My LInux Mint, which is my primary OS and windows 10 secondary OS' would both be on the SSD with their apps and programs that I use. Music and everything else would be on a ATA Sata Hard drive. The SSD would probably be in the 120 GB range.

TIA

Mel

February 7, 2017

I have a setup similar to what you are considering with O/S on an SSD and data on an HDD - but I am only running Linux Mint. You would have to consider the following:

Are you running under a Legacy BIOS or UEFI? If Legacy you can format as MBR (both disks.)
If UEFI you'll need GPT for the SSD at least. I think I'd format both GPT.
Probably you'd want to put Windows on first and disable Secure Boot if UEFI.
120 GB will be fine for two O/S.
You'd have to change the location of your Music, Documents, Videos and Pictures files within Windows Properties itself to the corresponding Folder on your HDD. You just can't copy as you do in Linux.

Frankly I don't Dual Boot any more - I just run the second O/S in a Virtual Machine.

February 7, 2017

Hello Raymac46

That's what I was planning on a 120 GB SSD. I have all of my hard drives GPT partitioned and am Multi Booting on one using UEFI and GPT. Never thought about a Virtual Machine. I just built a new computer with a New Asus A88XM-A Motherboard, 16 GB of Gskill Ripjaws 2133 ram. a AMD Kaveri 3.1 Ghz 7600 CPU with on Chip radeon R7 and a New Case Theraltake Versa 1. I think that would be plenty for a virtual Machine if Windows 10 will work in it. As far as Moving Folders around in Win 10 that is no problem for me as I do it all of the time. I use Libre Office, Thunderbird, and Chrome in windows and a few other open source software. at the present time I use grub in the efi to boot what ever OS I want or I can use the Bios to do it. I was mainly interest in any problems with drivers for the SSD drive. Thanks for your info.

Mel

February 7, 2017

I dual boot Arch Linux and Windows 7.

OS's/applications on the SSD, files and media on a spinning HDD.

It works fine with very little extra effort (I have been using this setup for 5 - 6 years and it is much simpler to set up now than it was back then).

February 7, 2017

16 GB of Gskill Ripjaws 2133 ram

No problem running VBox with that much RAM. I'm not sure what you mean by finding drivers for the SSD. It just works in both Windows and Linux. Edited February 7, 2017 by raymac46

February 8, 2017

at the present time I use grub in the efi to boot what ever OS I want or I can use the Bios to do it. I was mainly interest in any problems with drivers for the SSD drive. Thanks for your info.

Mel

hi there Mel. How big is your EFI partition in your dual boot pc ? Information gratefully received. :breakfast:

February 8, 2017

at the present time I use grub in the efi to boot what ever OS I want or I can use the Bios to do it. I was mainly interest in any problems with drivers for the SSD drive. Thanks for your info.

Mel

hi there Mel. How big is your EFI partition in your dual boot pc ? Information gratefully received.

THe EFI partition is 100 MiB Fat 32 sdb2, sdb1 is NTFS 450 MiB, sdb3 is Microsoft Reserved 16 MiB, sdb4 basic data partition NTFS (Windows 10) 232 GiB, sdb 5, 6, 7, are EXT 4 and swap, linux mint root, swap, home,

Mel

February 8, 2017

I went to Best Buy and bought a 120 GB SSD yesterday and installed it with a adapter in a 3 1/2 bay Hooked it up as Sata port one moved my other swapable hard drive racks to P 2, 3, 4. turned off the other hard drives and installed windows 10 on the new SSD. Wow what a difference the SSD made 37 seconds to about 10 seconds for boot win 10. that is a big change. I will shrink the win 10 NTFS data partition and use the space to install Linux Mint. will use grub as my boot manager for all drives. I am thinking maybe I will just put grub in the EFI of the SSD and use grub to boot the hard drive with linux already on it, which would be sdb. I am on sdb right now in linux mint. So it would be (update-grub) Then (grub-install /dev/sda2) sda2 is the EFI partition. I did hid before without a problem with my sata hard drives.

Mel

February 9, 2017

Anyone dual booting with a SSD I am thinking of installing one, just for the OS's. I want to dual boot Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.1 and Windows 10 Home. Anyone in the forum done it? What about drivers? I want to use the SSD as my boot drive for the OS's and a ata sata drive to store stuff on. My LInux Mint, which is my primary OS and windows 10 secondary OS' would both be on the SSD with their apps and programs that I use. Music and everything else would be on a ATA Sata Hard drive. The SSD would probably be in the 120 GB range.

TIA

Mel

That's exactly how I have it set up. Windows 10 and 4 Linuxi on 500GB Samsung SSD, and 2TB HD for data. All boot from MX-16 GRUB. Currently has Win10, MX-16, MX-15 KDE, KDE NeonOS and KXStudio.

Suggestions -

- Use GPT and UEFI boot

- Install Win 10 first then shrink its OS partition. It will create EFI partition and Recovery partitions.

- Disable Secure Boot and Fastboot

- Check for other Windows-centric setup options in UEFI (BIOS) menu. I had to change "Windows" to "Other OS" on my Gigabyte mobo.

Drivers were pretty much plug n' play for MX-16. There's even an Nvidia driver install helper utility. I had to chase a couple for Win 10 though, specifically for graphics and sound cards, and TP-Link wireless USB dongle.

root@mxbrain:/home/roger# gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 519AA67E-FBDC-4078-B2A7-0BB81EAF55CB
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 587429869 sectors (280.1 GiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size	 Code Name
1		 2048		 923647 450.0 MiB 2700 Basic data partition
2		 923648		 1126399 99.0 MiB EF00 EFI system partition
3		 1126400		 1159167 16.0 MiB 0C01 Microsoft reserved ...
4		 1159168	 157257727 74.4 GiB 0700 Basic data partition
5	 157257728	 219541503 29.7 GiB 8300
6	 219541504	 228628479 4.3 GiB	 8300
7	 228628480	 273516543 21.4 GiB 8300
8	 273516544	 326963199 25.5 GiB 8300
9	 326963200	 389345279 29.7 GiB 8300

roger@mxbrain:~
$ inxi -F
System: Host: mxbrain Kernel: 4.7.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.2
	 Distro: MX-16_x64 Metamorphosis 12 December 2016
Machine: Device: desktop System: Gigabyte product: N/A
	 Mobo: Gigabyte model: H170-HD3-CF v: x.x
	 UEFI: American Megatrends v: F4 date: 10/16/2015
CPU:	 Quad core Intel Core i5-6500 (-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB
	 clock speeds: max: 3600 MHz 1: 800 MHz 2: 800 MHz 3: 800 MHz 4: 800 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA Device 13c2
	 Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
	 Resolution: 3840x2160@60.00hz
	 GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A
Audio:	 Card-1 VIA ICE1712 [Envy24] PCI Multi-Channel I/O Controller driver: snd_ice1712
	 Card-2 NVIDIA Device 0fbb driver: snd_hda_intel
	 Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.7.0-0.bpo.1-amd64
Network: Card: Atheros TP-Link TL-WN821N v3 802.11n [Atheros AR7010+AR9287] driver: ath9k_htc
	 IF: wlan0 state: up mac: f8:d1:11:14:03:eb
Drives: HDD Total Size: 2500.5GB (41.9% used)
	 ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_850 size: 500.1GB
	 ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD2002FAEX size: 2000.4GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 30G used: 7.5G (27%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5
	 ID-2: swap-1 size: 4.65GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda6
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8C mobo: 27.8C gpu: 48C
	 Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:	 Processes: 199 Uptime: 2 days Memory: 1848.7/16004.6MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.8

February 9, 2017

I exchanged the 120 GB SSD and got a Samsung 240 GB wanted more room in case I decide to use a virtual machine for Windows 10 here is my list right now.

Partition table scan:

MBR: protective

BSD: not present

APM: not present

GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Disk /dev/sda: 488397168 sectors, 232.9 GiB

Logical sector size: 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 9095E8FE-A466-4C38-A3B1-C27329168A82

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 488397134

Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries

Total free space is 2349 sectors (1.1 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name

1 2048 923647 450.0 MiB 2700 Basic data partition

2 923648 1128447 100.0 MiB EF00 EFI system partition

3 1128448 1161215 16.0 MiB 0C01 Microsoft reserved ...

4 1161216 247111679 117.3 GiB 0700 Basic data partition

5 247111680 305704959 27.9 GiB 8300

6 305704960 313704447 3.8 GiB 8200

7 313704448 488396799 83.3 GiB 8300

inxi -F

System: Host: m-System-Mint-18-1 Kernel: 4.4.0-53-generic x86_64 (64 bit)

Desktop: Cinnamon 3.2.7 Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena

Machine: Mobo: ASUSTeK model: A88XM-A/USB 3.1 v: Rev X.0x

Bios: American Megatrends v: 0309 date: 03/04/2016

CPU: Quad core AMD A8-7600 Radeon R7 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G (-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB

clock speeds: max: 3100 MHz 1: 1400 MHz 2: 1900 MHz 3: 1400 MHz

4: 2400 MHz

Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kaveri [Radeon R7 Graphics]

Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)

Resolution: 1280x720@60.00hz

GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD KAVERI (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.8.0)

GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0

Audio: Card-1 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] FCH Azalia Controller

driver: snd_hda_intel

Card-2 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kaveri HDMI/DP Audio Controller

driver: snd_hda_intel

Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-53-generic

Network: Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller

driver: r8169

IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full

mac: 70:4d:7b:6a:d4:c4

Drives: HDD Total Size: 5251.0GB (5.0% used)

ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_850 size: 250.1GB

ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: Backup+_Hub_BK size: 5001.0GB

Partition: ID-1: / size: 28G used: 5.7G (22%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5

ID-2: /home size: 82G used: 4.5G (6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7

ID-3: swap-1 size: 4.10GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda6

RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present

Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 0.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 0.0

Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0

Info: Processes: 214 Uptime: 12 min Memory: 1092.7/14976.8MB

Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35

February 9, 2017

Looks good @mhbell. MX-16 now has AMD and Realtek firmwire included ootb. Should be pretty much plug n' play!

February 20, 2017

Interesting thread gave me some information on real dual boot setups. Thanks guys. :breakfast:

Dual Booting with SSD

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