0

I have a dual boot set up where windows and ubuntu are on separate disks. I installed the boot loader on the disk Ubuntu is installed and then set it as the primary disk. With Ubuntu 20.04 is released, Im think of of installing it fresh. How would I go about doing that ?

NAME        MOUNTPOINT                       LABEL              SIZE FSTYPE   FSUSED UUID
sda                                                           931.5G                 
└─sda1      /media/me/DATA               DATA             931.5G ntfs     237.1G 5292683C92682727
sdb                                                           447.1G                 
├─sdb1      [SWAP]                                             18.6G swap            ce9111f7-159f-4b0f-a64e-dab27666db50
├─sdb2                                                          620M vfat            0C7F-374B
└─sdb3      /                                                 427.9G ext4      29.2G ccb20ebc-99b8-4ae7-9e0e-b58ed40906c2
nvme0n1                                                       238.5G                 
├─nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi                                           260M vfat      85.1M E671-5EEE
├─nvme0n1p2                                                      16M                 
├─nvme0n1p3                                  Windows          237.2G ntfs            608E449B8E446C1A
└─nvme0n1p4                                  Windows RE tools   980M ntfs            78463CE9463CA9B0
rustyocean
  • 417
  • UEFI or BIOS? Only use Something Else and choose same partition as / (root) as you now have. Is /home separate partition? You would want to mount but NOT format it during install. Make double sure box to format is not checked. If not separate /home, be sure to have full backup of your install including list of installed apps. – oldfred Apr 24 '20 at 15:03
  • Its UEFI. Home is not a separate partition. I used the scheme here https://askubuntu.com/questions/726972/dual-boot-windows-10-and-linux-ubuntu-on-separate-hard-drives

    This is what I have sdb 447.1G
    ├─sdb1 swap 18.6G [SWAP]
    ├─sdb2 vfat 620M
    └─sdb3 ext4 427.9G /

     – rustyocean Apr 24 '20 at 16:39
  • so I dont have a separate home partition I just have swap, boot and root partitions. What about the other partitions, will grub update? – rustyocean Apr 24 '20 at 16:50
  • Your sdb2 as vfat is not a /boot partition but an ESP - efi system partition which has part of grub with UEFI boot. You swap looks too large, and new installs now do not need swap partition as they use swap file, but partition will be used if found. How full is / (root)? I prefer smaller / & larger /home or data partition(s). Post this above in question to preserve format: lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,fstype,fsused,uuid | egrep -v "^loop" – oldfred Apr 24 '20 at 17:05
  • @oldfred updated. Ahh didnt know that I didnt need the swap partition anymore. can I get rid of it then ?

    I put the bootloader on the ssd that has ubuntu and then made it primary. This way if something goes wrong I could just pull the drive and go back to Windows normally without having messed with its bootloader.

     – rustyocean Apr 24 '20 at 17:51
  • I still have a swap partition on another drive and just select it during install and say Do Not use. Then it creates the swap file version. If you delete swap partition then it will only use swap file. Some say a 4GB swap partition (those with servers) is still a good idea? Ubuntu's Ubiquity installer only installs grub to first drive's ESP even though installer screen seems to give options. Including all the data you have saved you only have used 29GB of / (root). You can shrink it and move /home into a new separate partition. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving – oldfred Apr 24 '20 at 20:09
  • so when I install I say something else and mount the old root. what about the old boot partition. will grub auto update ? – rustyocean Apr 24 '20 at 20:38
  • You do not show a boot partition. Grub will update the /EFI/ubuntu folder with new install and update UEFI to boot new install. – oldfred Apr 24 '20 at 22:08

1 Answers1

0

When you start up the installer, just make sure you are aware of path/disk name your Ubuntu disk has. There'll should be an option during the installation process that will ask you if you want to install over your previous version (will keep all your data, just install 20.04) or do a clean install (wipes all into oblivion). From there just like how you installed your previous Ubuntu version, find the disk you want to install 20.04 on in the disk selection/partition menu and select it and then continue onward with the installation.

This is what I've done with both clean installs and installs that merely replace the previous OS of 18.04.

FirDouglas
  • 45
  • Will grub update the listing? – rustyocean Apr 24 '20 at 19:45
  • It should. What I imagine to be the case would be that your Motherboard is still gonna recognize both of your disks. So long as it's installed on the disk you want, it would imagine that it will be readily available as a boot option in grub. Sorry about my previous response that I deleted, I misunderstood your question and, in conjunction, your follow-up question for me. – FirDouglas Apr 24 '20 at 21:11