[SOLVED] How To Dual Boot Windows 8.1 and Linux Mint 19.2

Pinball-Wizard

Honorable
Feb 15, 2015
29
0
10,530
I got my pc built
Asus Z97-A motherboard
i5 4690K cpu
8gb ram
2 separate 1tb hard drives
I'm having to say goodbye to beloved Windows7 and moving on to installing Windows 8.1 64bit and Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon 64bit
So will be dual booting whereby each operating system has it's own hard drive
From what I understand, I need to install Windows first and then Linux but it's definitely worrying me...I haven't dual booted since Windows XP and Vista and I's sure there's so much more now to make sure it's done properly.
I have already tried watching something like 20 videos on dual booting these 2 operating systems but not finding anything much that is very specific on ALL the details in one video.... they got videos with the doofuses who play stupid music while clicking at fast speeds and setting up the dual boot, there's the videos that are hardly several minutes long and they aren't really showing much, there's the videos that are titled in English but the narrator can hardly speak English or they're not even speaking English at all, and the list goes on and on with videos that are those fast-pace and/or lacking important info.
If anyone knows a REALLY good video that would help me or if you have some tech advice, I would really appreciate it
 
Solution
If you don't install programs to D: then it will never be a problem. Whatever OS you are in will consider its own drive to be C: and the other drive D: so they swap letters depending on which drive you boot to. You can certainly use the other drive for storage or shared documents, and it's sure handy to be able to boot to the other OS in case you need to repair one of them.

I mentioned the filesystem because by default Windows cannot read or write to the default filesystems used by linux, so if you accidentally click on the D: drive Windows will prompt you to format the drive so it can be used. If you don't intend to use the D: drive while in Windows then you could just hide that drive letter in Disk Management instead.

If those...
While both Windows' BOOTMGR and Linux's GRUB boot managers do usually work fine if you only have one disk, with two disks save yourself from any possibility of things going wrong by simply changing the hard disk boot priority in the BIOS every time you want to boot the other OS.

Install each OS with only one drive connected. After that you may leave both connected and simply change which drive to boot from.

If you want to be able to access the linux drive from Windows, either install Linux to Fat32 or install the appropriate linux filesystem driver into Windows.
 

Pinball-Wizard

Honorable
Feb 15, 2015
29
0
10,530
Thanks for the reply :)
So will there be issues with drive paths if I install each operating system on it's own hard drive whereby If I install each one on it's own hard drive by only having one hard drive connected to the motherboard during each installation, will both hard drives letter themselves as C drive and then could cause problems. Not sure what all problems this could cause but one thing that comes to mind is if I do what you mentioned "If you want to be able to access the linux drive from Windows, either install Linux to Fat32 or install the appropriate linux file system driver into Windows."
I was also wondering about UEFI aspect, raid, secure boot, and any other possible setting that would need to be made before installing the 2 operating systems.
 
If you don't install programs to D: then it will never be a problem. Whatever OS you are in will consider its own drive to be C: and the other drive D: so they swap letters depending on which drive you boot to. You can certainly use the other drive for storage or shared documents, and it's sure handy to be able to boot to the other OS in case you need to repair one of them.

I mentioned the filesystem because by default Windows cannot read or write to the default filesystems used by linux, so if you accidentally click on the D: drive Windows will prompt you to format the drive so it can be used. If you don't intend to use the D: drive while in Windows then you could just hide that drive letter in Disk Management instead.

If those are the only two operating systems you are considering, then both do support UEFI and Secure Boot so you shouldn't have to change anything there. With only two independent disks, choose AHCI instead of RAID.
 
Solution

TRENDING THREADS