Installing dual boot in SSD and HDD

[CloudySpace]

Hello, I've been using Manjaro for about two years now and I just got a 240 GB M.2 SSD for a HP Pavilion Power 15-cd001 Laptop. It also has an hybrid graphic cards; one Intel 650 and one Nvidia GTX 1050.

I had a dual boot with Windows 10 on my 1 TB HDD before and I was wondering if it was possible to have a dual boot on the SSD now.

What I'm trying to do is install the KDE version and have the main OS in a partition in the SSD and the data in the HDD as I have in my newly reinstalled Windows 10. I was planning to allocate 30 or 60 GB in my SSD for Manjaro and have the other 163 GB for Windows (this is because the 240 GB are not all usable, just 223 GB) and use the UEFI partition Windows uses for boot.

The HDD functions like an external HDD but it is internally mounted within the slot in my computer.

What I've seen in other posts is that it's possible to have symlinks to the HDD but I don't know if that's what's recommended in this case. Also, I always crash my installations when trying to do manual partitioning so there's that .

Many thanks!

[Wollie]

Dual boot on the SDD should be possible, just follow this guide:

[HowTo] Dual-boot Manjaro - Windows 10 - Step by Step

Dual boot - Step by Step Target systems Firmware Checklist Windows preparation Manjaro installation Revisions Target systems UEFI Computers with preinstalled Windows (Windows 10) is computers using UEFI firmware. This guide is a generic guide targeted at UEFI installations. However some of the guide does apply even if you are using a BIOS/MBR setup. DO NOT mix UEFI with MBR partition scheme. To ensure a successful dual-boot installation using Windows and Manjaro there ar…

The HDD could be mounted using systemd, see here:

[HowTo] Automount ANY device using systemd

Disk device recognition Manjaro uses udev (see Arch Wiki) to load devices at boot time. The loading of devices is arbitrary and therefore you cannot predict which device will be available at a given path. But static device names do exist and you can assign specific locations to your device and thus ensure e.g. scripts will work as expected. What to learn Overview of system mount units Structure and Content of a mount unit Mount at boot (immediate mount) Mount at demand (mount on first access) …

[CloudySpace]

Okay, I'll try that and update here if I have any problems. Thank you for the guides!

[michaldybczak]

@CloudySpace

I had a dual boot with Windows 10 on my 1 TB HDD before and I was wondering if it was possible to have a dual boot on the SSD now.

Sure you can. There are no reservations to do so, in fact, having Linux OS on another drive then Windows is the better option than having them on the same drive, because there are fewer chances that Windows will mess something during update.

This is also how I set my laptop.

100 GB SSD drive divided into 40 GB /root partition ext4, 60 GB /home partition ext4

1 TB HDD divided into two partition, 300MB for Windows ntfs, 700MB for Linux data ext4 (mounted and readable by Windows but not writable - it's enough thou, in the past it was ntfs but it created too many troubles since there is no permission system on ntfs and errors happen, so I transformed it to ext4), where I moved my biggest folders as Video, Music, Download, Steam's game install directory and similar, and then symlinked them to /home.

My laptop also has Intel/Nvidia hybrid GPU setup.

I run this setup for nearly 4 years. The only bad thing about it is too little space on my small SSD, so 40GB for root is too small... It was OK, but over the years it grew and grew and despite me trying to keep it clean, it's used in almost 100%, so I have to trim it down even further (I just restricted my journal directory to 1GB). 40 GB for root is not much nowadays. 50GB would IMO the least amount but I just couldn't afford with such small SSD. For most of the time 40GB was fine but the longer you use system and treat it as your main one, the more space it needs, because you need this and that app and so on.