[SOLVED] External SSD with BOTH Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10

[MCMailbox]

Hi all, I hope this is in the right category.

I recently picked up a 1TB external SSD on which I want to install both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04, and be able to boot into either of those operating systems or the OS on the internal storage of the host computer.

I have already installed Ubuntu according to this guide here: How to Create a Truly Portable Ubuntu Installation on an External USB HDD or SSD

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble installing Windows 10 on the same drive. I set up Ubuntu to occupy 400GB on this drive, so I made another 400GB partition on which to install Windows 10, plus another 100GB reserved for storage. Neither Rufus or YUMI seem to be able to do the trick. Rufus threatens to format the entire drive instead of just the 400GB Windows partition, and YUMI is able to create a Windows to Go installation on there but I am unable to boot to it.

I assume the issue lies in setting up the boot manager on the external drive, as GRUB only detects the Windows installation on the hosts internal storage and Ubuntu, but not Windows to Go on the external drive. Any advice on how to proceed from here? I am considering trying WinToUSB as well

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Installing Windows on an external drive, even without a dualboot thing, is non trivial.

[Official] Best Free Windows To Go Creator Wizard Helps Create Portable Windows 11/10/8/7!

As a Windows To Go Creator Wizard alternative, WinToUSB (also called Windows To USB) allows you to install & run Windows on USB drive or Thunderbolt drive or clone currently running Windows to USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, with it you can easily create a portable Windows 11/10/8/7 on an...

www.easyuefi.com

Windows To Go: How to Install and Run Windows 10 from a USB Drive

Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise...

www.techspot.com

Secondly, a dualboot thing really wants Windows installed first, and then Linux.

Lastly....why this on the external?

 

[MCMailbox]

Installing Windows on an external drive, even without a dualboot thing, is non trivial.

[Official] Best Free Windows To Go Creator Wizard Helps Create Portable Windows 11/10/8/7!

As a Windows To Go Creator Wizard alternative, WinToUSB (also called Windows To USB) allows you to install & run Windows on USB drive or Thunderbolt drive or clone currently running Windows to USB drive or Thunderbolt drive, with it you can easily create a portable Windows 11/10/8/7 on an...

www.easyuefi.com

Windows To Go: How to Install and Run Windows 10 from a USB Drive

Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise...

www.techspot.com

Secondly, a dualboot thing really wants Windows installed first, and then Linux.

Lastly....why this on the external?

Thanks! I'm a bioinformatician and my work is largely split between my desktop when working from home and my laptop when working in the lab. A lot of my work gets done with pipelines run in software like R and Python, and on top of that some software just runs better on either Windows or Linux and its best to have it locally rather than offsite on a server or something, so both the data as well as the packages need to be identical across both machines and constantly backing the latest files and changes between them quickly becomes a mess! I want to have both OSs on this external so I can just swap it among my machines and pick up exactly where I left off every time.

I'll try setting it up with WinToUSB first and then Ubuntu