I'm not a big fan of dual boot and a boot manager (eg grub) handling Ubuntu 16 with windows, due to fast boot, uefi windows update, etc. Id like to have Ubuntu on one hard drive, and Windows on another in my uefi enabled laptop. In the past I have disconnected all my drives from my desktop, installed Ubuntu onto a separate drive, then selected my boot device from the bios (preferred to boot manager), and it worked great. Any reason this would be an issue from a laptop? Do laptops generally allow booting from their secondary drive bay? Perhaps most importantly, if I do this, I can leave fast boot, hibernate and all my other windows settings the way they are without concern they conflict with Ubuntu, as there is no shared booting operations?

Regards,

edencorbin,

I am not a fan of dual-booting either, but regardless of what term you use for the operation, this tutorial may be of help:

http://linuxbsdos.com/2015/10/31/how...o-hard-drives/

Scroll down the page for further advice from SH.

I have a secondary hdd in my laptop. yes you can set it up to dual boot by using BIOS selection. But you got to go into BIOS and make sure your boot order listings have secondary bay listed as a option to boot off it.

I only did one EFI install on some one else laptop. Some dude that happened into the coffee shop I hang out at. He found out I was using Linux, so he wanted to use Linux.

He had windows. Instead of just blasting Windows out of it. Because I didn't want to chance screwing up his entire laptop so he'd not have any OS on it. Being that this was my first time ever dealing with UEFI. I did get it to work without a hitch. Just taking my time shooting in the dark. Because I had no idea on how to do this not having any experience to draw from. I just installed Slackware EFI onto it so it shared the HDD.

It ended up with showing a BIOS menu to pick which OS to boot as well. So from that short lived experience, not being repeated so my memory cells in my brain can recall everything. I did get it to work on first try, and it had a BIOS EFI - MBR menu to select which OS to use therefore side stepping grub.

even though that was on the same drive. I'd still say. If your laptop has the ability to use the CD/DVD slot for a HDD then 99.99% chance it will be able to boot off that one instead of the main one, and have the ability to select which one by the use of BIOS selection. As mine does. HP 8460p

You just need to get into your BIOS and look around at the boot sequence listings to see what you see to be sure.

I would suggest that in addition to reviewing the link posted above, you take a look at the link below at the Ubuntu Documentation site which explains dual booting windows with Ubuntu in UEFI.

The windows fastboot and hibernation will prevent you from mounting the windows partitions from Ubuntu or any Linux because the potential for data corruption is too high. If you want to access a windows partition from ubuntu for some reason, you would need to do a full shutdown.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

to further expand on what @yancek said in post #4 you can go into Windows and change the power setting to remove that problem as I did. I just reboot windows then go into Linux. This allows me to access windows. I cannot explain it, WINDOWS. but that is what I have to do.

I would like to mention that it is recommended to disable Windows fastboot when dualbooting. It basically utilizes hibernation to save an image of the Windows kernel and loaded drivers to a hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) upon shutdown so when you start your PC again, Windows simply loads the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) into memory to resume your PC instead of restarting it.
So it doesn't really perform a full shutdown and if you were to load Ubuntu without performing an actual shutdown in Windows, you might cause corruption in one or both of your systems

First I wanted to thank everyone these are all helpful comments. I think BW-userx most directly addressed what I am trying to do. I don't want to dual boot in any traditional sense, I want Windows on one hard drive, Linux on another, I would plan to disconnect one hard drive while installing the other so the OS is not aware of the other system and does not install a boot manager. Then I would use bios to switch between. In this specific method/case, would I be correct that fast boot hibernation file / etc. are not an issue, at least if I don't try to save/edit windows files after booting into linux?

It should not be an issue. I would just make sure to perform a complete shutdown of Windows before removing the drive. Typically, if fastboot is enabled, you can hold down Shift before you select Shutdown which will perform a full shutdown

to futher expaned on what I said to split windows and Linux on two hard drives.
Where Linux is going to use Grub or lilo or whatever boot loader of your choice.
say you have windows on the first hdd /dev/sda
say you have linux on the second hdd /dev/sdb

you just install grub onto which ever hdd that has linux on it. Sure grub is going to pick it up, windows, but you'll still be able to just switch to the hdd with windows on it and let windows use its boot loader to boot it. Because Grub is not over writing windows boot stuff it keeps on the HDD it is installed on.

if memory serves me right that does work. cuz I've tried it a while back just for that reason. to see if it would work.

Interesting, but, aside from convenience, why do I need/want grub at all? My thought was disconnect windows hard drive, install Ubuntu 16 on second drive (I don't think grub installs by default or does it?), then, plug windows drive back in. Then I can push F2 to get to UEFI menu and choose which OS to start from, am I missing something?

if you do not use or install grub it will not boot, even though you have a full working system on it.

Every OS has some type of boot loader to get from the hardware to the software, bootstrap ....
so yes you need grub or lilo or one of the other boot loaders out there that Linux can use to get it up and running.

even winodws has a boot loader if you install another Window OS on to your hdd you can use windows boot loader to pick one of them two to boot.

MOD: more:

you should not have to unplug your windows hdd to install Linux. just tell linux where to be installed.

it will ask you where you want it.
/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
if Windows is on your primary drive then that is /dev/sda
the secondary drive is /dev/sdb where linux would be installed.

When I did that dudes Laptop EFI BIOS menu picked it up to what is what then placed it into the menu to choose.

Okay great, that was my misunderstanding as I see that grub is standard/installed by default. Okay so I will install Ubuntu/grub, I may unplug the other hard drive just to be extra safe, install it, and I think I will be good to go, and can leave the windows hard drive with fast boot and all its other windows configs.

Ok, thinking.....
if you unplug the sda and use sdb it will then change sdb to sda by default because their is no longer an sda
BUT
being that you are/ or better yet Ubunututututu will most likely be using UUID for partition naming. Then that will not matter. If not it is not a total loss. if by chance when you plug Windows hdd back in and something does go wrong. It can be easily fixed via live usb boot. Mount, fix fstab.

Just be sure that when Ubuntututu ask you if you want grub installed, yes is the answer and seeings how you'll only have one hdd to pick from then select whatever it is that Ubuntutu suggests. Which should be /dev/sda

if by chance it shows /dev/sdb with only one hdd, then run with it.

When you said something goes wrong, what were you thinking? With Ubuntu or Windows?

I love dual*booting! Perhaps your probables are microcoughed-losedough$?

This will help: https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/gr...mentation.html