Question Dual-Boot problem Windows/Linux-MBR/EFI

[PopCnady]

I'm not sure i'm posting this in the right category so sorry in advance for that. See, i have a 1TB hd with windows 10 installed for quite some time now. But since i'm getting into programming i wanted to install linux too. Since i had just installed a new 500GB hd on my pc, i decided to use that for linux. I found it weird that when i was installing ubuntu, it didn't recognize that i already had windows installed, but since i was installing it on a complete different hd, i thought i would matter much.

The installation happened without any problems but now my problem is that i cannot properly dual boot because when linux was installed on the 500GB hd, it made it an EFI style hd, while my original one is MBR. So basically, my windows can't see that hd anymore or know that i have windows installed on it. To make matters worse, my keyboard won't work pre-boot so i can't access the bios and change the loading order every time.

I tried downloading EasyBCD but since my windows can't see the other hd, easyBCD can't find the linux install. I thought a possible solution would be to either convert my windows HD to EFI or the linux one to MBR but i'm scared of doing that and either losing all my data on the windows hd or messing up the boot function by erasing linux, since i heard that if you install linux after windows, it takes control of that. So, can anyone help me?

 

[Colif]

There is a way to convert win 10 to GPT without losing information - https://www.disk-partition.com/windows-10/windows-10-mbr-to-gpt-0310.html

The problem you have is both drives have their own boot partitions and unless you can get linux to use the windows one, or other way around, you are going to have issues.

Converting windows to GPT gets you closer, should be a way to scan installs so you can add either win 10 or linux to boot partition of one of the drives.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/dual-boot-windows-10-linux/

You can use rEFInd boot manager which works with Linux, Windows and Mac. The Boot manager files are stored in the Boot EFI partition rather than the Windows System partition so it may work with BitLocker. I use it to dual boot between Windows 10 and Linux Mint.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/29101989/How-to-add-Ubuntu-to-Windows-Boot-Loader.html