Question Dual boot question (W10 & Linux Mint)

[Mk56TClaire]

I have a Windows PC and a Linux PC. If somehow I decided to move the HDD from the Linux PC to my Windows PC, is it possible to dual boot?
If it can, what should I do?
Windows:

• W10 on 1TB HDD
• Ryzen 3 2200G - 8GB RAM
• Asrock A320M HDV

Linux:

• Mint 19 on 500GB HDD
• Phenom II X4 955BE - 4GB RAM
• Colorful C.A970X X5

 

[jakeythehobo]

Yes, you can dual boot.

You could just put the HDD into the PC, and whenever you want to boot to Linux, manually select the drive to boot from in the BIOS. Windows should still be the default to boot from.

You can also look into using Grub to easily change between OSs on boot, without having to go into the BIOS.

Here's one way to do it: https://askubuntu.com/questions/726972/dual-boot-windows-10-and-linux-ubuntu-on-separate-hard-drives

If you're happy to do a clean install of Mint, it should give you the option when installing it to allow dual booting.

 

[USAFRet]

Just moving the physical Linux drive to the other system will give you both in that system.

But to choose which, you'd have to interrupt the boot process and select which drive to boot from. You don't get a fancy GRUB menu, unless you manually edit that.

 

[Mk56TClaire]

...

So if Linux is already installed, if I move the HDD to another PC there will be no Grub menu and I must manually select which drive boot first?

 

[AllanGH]

I haven't messed with independent drive installations in the same machine in a very long time but, there used to be a BIOS facility which allowed complete isolation between two bootable drives installed simultaneously. This was necessary because of the tendency for MS OSses to try to exert primacy over boot devices in the same computer--purely an anti-competitive feature of their products, mind you, because there is no technical necessity for that kind of thing.

You may have a boot isolation feature in your BIOS/UEFI, with an attendant boot menu that is accessed by hot key at boot time, or a boot menu that can be chainloaded at startup. This would require a bit of a hunt through your MB manual, and snooping through the BIOS/UEFI utility itself, to verify if this is the case in your instance.