Hey guys, after 2 years since my last attempt (and recently trying fedora on my laptop) Im ready to try again to install it on my desktop. First time I installed Nobara and it nuked my windows boots partition which caused a lot of trouble and trauma (couldnt boot into windows no matter what). Basically I want to accomplish this:
1- I want to install Fedora on a separate drive and keep my windows drive completely intact (Need it for work).
2- Preferably I would like GRUB to ask which boot option I want to use if my linux drive is set to be my boot drive and to boot straight to windows if its my windows drive set to boot.
Can someone please guide me into installing it the safest way possible?
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Fedora will default to your empty drive, but just in case, but into the liveUSB, and identify your drive assignments and partitions so you are POSITIVE you’re installing to the right drive. The installer will ask you multiple times where you want to install, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Grub will default to asking you what you want to boot. You can change the defaults after install if you’d like.
All my drives have different sizes so the chance is super low. My worries is because I picked the correct drive in nobara and it still nuked my windows boot partition (the rest of my windows drive was fine but couldnt boot into it), I was wondering if I need to somehow disable my windows drive to make sure nothing happens to it, but then Im worried GRUB wont see it
I’d have to see the Nonara install to know, but I don’t see how that would happen then or now. I’ve installed thousands of machines and never had it accidentally do anything like “miss” the correct target drive.
Either way, you shouldn’t have an issue now.
Technically it didnt miss, it installed in the correct drive but still destroyed my windows boot partition. I asked in the nobara disc and they said the program nobara uses to install is bad, so maybe that is why? So I can just install Fedora on my other drive without any worries? Nothing special to keep in mind? Should I use Fedora’s tool to create the bootable drive?
EDIT: Btw, this time I wont install with nobara, I will just install fedora KDE
Yep. Installing on two different drives, make sure you go into your BIOS settings and set the new drive as the first boot target to get you a Grub menu on boot though.
and if I set it back to windows it will boot straight into it with no issues right (no GRUB)?
Yep! Grub should show you the Fedora or Windows boot options though, so you shouldn’t need to flop back and forth in the BIOS.
For anyone new to the Linux world, I can’t recommend Learn Linux TV enough. He has a video walking through this exact process, here’s an Invidious and YouTube link for it.
As far as dual booting goes, issues can arise after updates. I recall this happening a few months back due to a Windows update. So just be aware of this possibly happening down the road. I need Windows for work at times too, but I strictly use a VM. I’ve hated Microsoft since Windows 8, their amount of user tracking is bonkers and a big part of why I just use a VM. This is just food for thought though.
Did you manually partition? It sounds like when you installed Nobara the /boot/efi partition got formatted, a similar thing happened to me recently (just wasnt paying attention), I used a Windows install USB to get a command prompt and restore the EFI entry.
Identify your Windows drive and your secondary drive, install Bazzite (bazzite.gg) on a secondary drive, you’ll be able to test how it runs on your hardware. If you want to keep it, then just chose whatever you want to boot to using your bios. You can set one of them to default, and you can temporarily boot to the other by pressing your motherboard’s designated boot key (usually F11 or F12, look up yours).
The best advice I can give you is to switch to Linux is don’t right away. Switch the applications you use to open source or Linux compatible alternatives that also run on windows. Then after you get used to those on windows then make the switch.
I would also recommend not dual booting at first since it’s too easy to jump ship at the slightest issue vs sticking with it to figure out the issue just like you would with a problem on windows. It’s a real thing I have experienced it in reverse as a long time Linux user that tried Windows 11 i kept jumping back to Linux every time I ran into issues that caused frustration.
