Quick Procedural Q: Switching drives: Putting Linux on one, and Windows on the other

Pen guin · 11-19-2022, 03:37 PM

The videos that I've seen, that talk about moving the Home directory, move it to an empty drive. My case is different. In this case, My 5.7 Y.O. SSD (March 2017) contains my Windows 10 OS

My 1GB NVMe drive contains my Linux 20.4 installation.

So, with both drives containing data, how would I put the Windows OS, (which I plan to use only for gaming, i.e. Flight Simulation) on the NVMe drive, and the Linux system, on the 1TB SSD?

I do have an empty ext4 formatted 3rd drive. a WD Passport. i.e. a USB Ext. Hard Drive.

Any Ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Pen guin

mrmazda · 11-20-2022, 12:27 AM

Partition the Passport with two partitions sized to contain the data to be backed up, in compressed format if necessary, from your Linux and Windows data directories, and formatted appropriately for the software you will perform your backups with. After backups are complete, install Windows on the NVME, then install Linux on the SSD, following up with restoring data from the Passport.

Why you wish to do this is a big question. I doubt many games, or any, depend very much on disk I/O while playing any game (unless trying to get by on insufficient installed RAM). IOW, the increased I/O speed from NVME should only affect loading time, then run entirely or mostly from RAM, while all the work you do with Linux will be slowed down from SSD's 1/4 speed or slower I/O compared to NVME.

To me it's far more sensible to have both operating systems on NVME partitions, and use the SSD only for spillover or infrequently accessed data, or large files such as videos, for which any ordinary old slower HDD provides as much speed as can be required for playing any video at normal speed.

syg00 · 11-20-2022, 01:50 AM

Hard to argue with any of the above.

However, for me Windows is always the problem child, so install it first as suggested. I mess with it so rarely I tend to "clone" it rather than re-installing everything. This has had positive comments from other users on LQ - never used it; I use the image tool mentioned at the bottom.
Linux is much easier to handle, although grub will need some attention. Maybe the complete re-install mentioned might be the go.

Arnulf · 11-20-2022, 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pen guin

My 5.7 Y.O. SSD (March 2017) contains my Windows 10 OS

My 1GB NVMe drive contains my Linux 20.4 installation.

It must be a very compact Linux installation to fit on a 1 GB drive.

Or is it a 1 TB NVMe drive instead?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pen guin

and the Linux system, on the 1TB SSD?

Don't do this. A SATA SSD is extremely slow in comparison to a NVMe SSD. Put both OS onto the NVMe drive. Clone your Linux to your 3rd drive. Don't forget /boot if it's installed on an extra partition. Here is an example partition layout for a NVMe drive with Linux & Windows installed:

Code:

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors 
Disk model: CT500P5PSSD8                             
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes 
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes 
Disklabel type: gpt 
Disk identifier: 6CB1B719-6B7F-4099-BA62-EB8AD48756C8 

Device             Start       End   Sectors   Size Type 
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048   1026047   1024000   500M EFI System 
/dev/nvme0n1p2   1026048 585936590 584910543 278.9G Microsoft basic data 
/dev/nvme0n1p3 585936896 587038719   1101824   538M Windows recovery environment 
/dev/nvme0n1p4 587038720 587563007    524288   256M Linux filesystem 
/dev/nvme0n1p5 587563008 976773134 389210127 185.6G Linux filesystem

/dev/nvme0n1p1 is a little big, 200M should be enough.
It's a 500 GB NVMe drive in example above. /dev/nvme0n1p2 may be larger for gaming on your 1 TB NVMe drive.
If you don't want an extra partition for Linux /boot /dev/nvme0n1p4 becomes your whole Linux partition and /dev/nvme0n1p5 isn't required.

Pen guin · 11-20-2022, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmazda

Partition the Passport with two partitions sized to contain the data to be backed up, in compressed format if necessary, from your Linux and Windows data directories, and formatted appropriately for the software you will perform your backups with. After backups are complete, install Windows on the NVME, then install Linux on the SSD, following up with restoring data from the Passport.

Why you wish to do this is a big question. I doubt many games, or any, depend very much on disk I/O while playing any game (unless trying to get by on insufficient installed RAM). IOW, the increased I/O speed from NVME should only affect loading time, then run entirely or mostly from RAM, while all the work you do with Linux will be slowed down from SSD's 1/4 speed or slower I/O compared to NVME.

To me it's far more sensible to have both operating systems on NVME partitions, and use the SSD only for spillover or infrequently accessed data, or large files such as videos, for which any ordinary old slower HDD provides as much speed as can be required for playing any video at normal speed.

Thanks for your post. That clears up a the I/O issue, which was news to me. As to why, I'd thought I'd get faster performance, and a person in the Flight Sim community, said "If possible" put it on an NVMe drive. Is it any riskier, re: the boot loader for Linux or, Windows, to put everything on one drive, rather than the way things are set up now? I know a lot of people do it that way, rather than, in my case, press F12, and select either Linux or Windows to start.

And Arnulf you are right, it's a 1TB NVMe drive.

haertig · 11-20-2022, 06:25 PM

An NVMe drive is much faster than a SATA drive if you read the specs. Totally blows away the SATA drive. On paper. In real world use you should be able to measure an increase in performance ("measure", not "feel"). But as to how fast your computer "feels", I'd bet you couldn't hardly tell the difference. Maybe a little but as it boots, but probably no discernible difference after that.

It's like comparing a trip to your local grocery store between a 700 horsepower Indy race car and a 1.5 liter Kia. There are so many things other than raw power that would make that grocery store run functionally the same with either vehicle, probably even easier in the Kia.

Say, moving from an HDD to a SATA SSD gives you a 10x boot speed increase. And then moving from a SATA to an NVMe SSD gives you another 10x boost. That's being generous in both cases. So moving from HDD to SATA SSD, your boot time decreased from 30 seconds to 3 seconds. Your eyes would pop out of you head. You saved 27 seconds! Now, move from SATA to NVMe SSD - your boot time decreased from 3 seconds to 0.3 seconds. You saved 2.7 seconds. Maybe you raised your eyebrows a little bit there, but your eyes certainly didn't pop out of your head. 27 seconds is functionally significant. 2.7 seconds ... not so much. And after booting where you might notice a little bit of speed increase, you're probably not going to notice any speed increase with normal computer use.

I would buy NVMe over SATA given the choice. Because it's not much more expensive, if at all, if you wait for sales. And it's newer technology.
So why not? Maybe some day that NVMe drive will get put into a hot rod system with a killer CPU that could keep up. But don't expect a present day performance boost like would seem evident by reading paper specifications.

mrmazda · 11-21-2022, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

In real world use you should be able to measure an increase in performance ("measure", not "feel"). But as to how fast your computer "feels", I'd bet you couldn't hardly tell the difference. Maybe a little but as it boots, but probably no discernible difference after that.

Before knowing the difference between NVME and SATA in M.2 form factor, I populated my first motherboard providing an M.2 socket, a Kaby Lake, with an SATA stick. When I upgraded it to NVME, the evident difference was akin to an upgrade from HDD to SATA SSD, which is to say plenty and very noticeable when running long jobs heavy on storage I/O. All my populated motherboard M.2 sockets now host NVMEs. The SATA M.2's I bought while still naive now serve only as backup media here. My newest, a Rocket Lake, takes much longer to POST than to boot. Here are some numbers for some desktop PCs here, arranged top to bottom (MOL) newest to oldest CPU:

Code:

## ab560		# Rocket Lake i5-11400; newest PC
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model:
  Model: "Silicon Motion SM2263EN/SM2263XT SSD Controller"
# hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 6404 MB in  3.00 seconds = 2133.97 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @3.369s
└─multi-user.target @3.369s

## ab250		# Kaby Lake Pentium G4600
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model:
  Model: "Silicon Motion SM2263EN/SM2263XT SSD Controller"
# hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 3434 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1144.57 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @3.839s
└─multi-user.target @3.839s

## gb250		# Kaby Lake i3-7100T; newest NVME
# hwinfo --disk | grep PNY
  Serial ID: "PNY<filter>" (PNY)
# hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 6136 MB in  3.00 seconds = 2044.57 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @3.760s
└─multi-user.target @3.760s

## ara88	# AMD A10-7850K
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "SPCCSolidStateDi" (Silicon Power)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1428 MB in  3.00 seconds = 475.83 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @6.453s
└─multi-user.target @6.452s

## ab85m	# Pentium G3220
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "TEAM T253X2256G" (Team Group)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1398 MB in  3.00 seconds = 465.52 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @5.067s
└─multi-user.target @5.067s

## msi85	# i3-4150T (same chipset/SATA rev 3.0 as ab85m)
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "ST1000NM0011" (Seagate)
# hdparm -t /dev/sdc
/dev/sdc:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 416 MB in  3.01 seconds = 138.33 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @5.474s	# (boots from SSD)
└─multi-user.target @5.473s

## gb970	# AMD Phenom II X4 965
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "CT120BX500SSD1" (Crucial)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1626 MB in  3.00 seconds = 541.50 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @5.409s
└─multi-user.target @5.409s

## hp750	# i5-750; SATA rev N/A
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "CT120BX500SSD1" (Crucial)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 822 MB in  3.00 seconds = 273.79 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @9.478s
└─multi-user.target @9.478s

## hp750	# i5-750; SATA rev N/A
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "Generic SM/xD-Picture" (white label Seagate SATA 1.0)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 182 MB in  3.01 seconds =  60.38 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @54.871s
└─display-manager.service @49.230s +5.640s

## gx78b	# E8400 Core2Duo; SATA rev 2.0
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "APS-SL3N-256" (Pioneer)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 770 MB in  3.01 seconds = 256.14 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @1min 35.565s
└─multi-user.target @1min 35.565s

## gx780	# E8400 Core2Duo; SATA rev 2.0
# hwinfo --disk | grep Model: | head -n1
  Model: "ST3750525AS" (Seagate)
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 326 MB in  3.02 seconds = 108.12 MB/sec
# systemd-analyze critical-chain | head -n5 | tail -n2
graphical.target @30.282s
└─multi-user.target @30.282s

Each boot represented above was on openSUSE Tumbleweed, except for msi85, which I'm typing this on booted to openSUSE Leap.

yancek · 11-21-2022, 04:15 AM

[QUOTE]Is it any riskier, re: the boot loader for Linux or, Windows, to put everything on one drive, rather than the way things are set up now? [/QUOTE

You indicate you have windows 10. If that was preinstalled it is almost certainly a UEFI install. If you are using Ubuntu or one of its derivatives and it was also installed in UEFI mode, the Grub bootloader should have detected windows and put a menuentry for it in its boot menu. Since it apparently did not, there is a reason for that which is likely having Ubuntu in Legacy mode although there could be other reasons. If you are able to successfully use both systems by selecting from the BIOS firmware on boot, I would not change that, especially if you are not familiar with Grub. Grub should detect a UEFI install of windows if it is also a UEFI install. I'm not aware of any UEFI software for windows which will boot another OS UEFI. EasyBCD did that with Legacy installs and was simple to use but they do not have similar software for UEFI. See link below.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/uefi/

My experience with nvme drives is similar to what is posted above. I have 2 laptops with the same 3 OS's on them one with a SATA drive and one with an SSD and all of them boot 4 times faster on the SSD.

Arnulf · 11-21-2022, 12:43 PM

Booting from NVMe drive requires GPT & "UEFI boot" in most cases. This is a standard. Only a few mainboards violate this standard.
If Windows 10 was preinstalled another problem with Linux may occur. "Secure Boot" is enabled in UEFI and prevents Linux from boot. Will a Windows installed with "Secure Boot" enabled boot again after disabling "Secure Boot" in UEFI?