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I have 2 Drives: 500GB SSD and 512GB HDD. Currently I have installed Ubuntu on a different partition of the SSD. Windows is installed on the SSD too. And I managed to mess up my boot. Anyway, I has thinking that I should better install Ubuntu on the second HDD with an EFI partition and all that is necessary. Will this approach give me more headaches in setting up the bootloader or it should be easier.

So when I start the computer I would like to go straight in Windows (no timout or boot options) unless I decide I want to start Ubuntu.

Can anyone give me some help?

Edit: My question is different than the one pointed as duplicate. I need to know if using the same Drive (SSD only) for both installation is better/worse than using two Drives(SSD and HDD). I need to understand how the bootloader needs to be configured and how it will behave on both cases.

P.S: Anyone figured out how to have Ubuntu 14.04 properly shutdown/reboot? I've been fighting it for some time and nothing seem to work!

Cristian
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  • possible duplicate of Installing Ubuntu on a Pre-Installed Windows 8 (64-bit) System (UEFI Supported) – Pilot6 Jun 30 '15 at 19:00
  • @Pilot6 not really. I've read that question entirely and it does not answer my specific questions! – Cristian Jun 30 '15 at 19:07
  • Anyway it is too broad. You can install both ways. And either way is not better/worse. – Pilot6 Jun 30 '15 at 19:08
  • You can do with either way it would be better if you do in separate hdd because if try to install both on same sometime it might get crash but can do both. – BDRSuite Jun 30 '15 at 19:30
  • What happens if i install windows on first Hdd, remove it, install ubuntu on 2nd Hdd and then have both Hdds inside (i guess 1 efi partiton on first hdd and 1 efi partition on 2nd hdd). Will my only way of booting into windows or ubuntu be from the Bios boot chooser? – Cristian Jun 30 '15 at 20:06
  • I did that with two Ubuntu installs. UEFI forgets first drive's settings when you disconnect it. And installing Ubuntu on sdb, still automatically uses the efi partition on sda if both drives connected. I specially told it to install grub to sdb, and it even said that in closely watching install process, but it overwrote my ubuntu folder in sda and then only let me boot second install. Actual only change was tiny grub.cfg in /EFI/ubuntu and which partition it pointed to. – oldfred Jun 30 '15 at 20:25

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You can install Ubuntu which ever way you prefer. Most Linux distributions including Ubuntu will use a boot loader. So when you install it there will be a menu that gives you choices to choose which OS to run. You can configure the grub file for a specific timeout period and which OS to boot from by default. Either way there will be a boot loader.

However if you install Ubuntu on your secondary HDD and you choose to boot from that and there is no other OS installed it will automatically boot into Ubuntu. It's only when you have multiple OS's that you will have the choice to choose operating systems.

Additionally, to answer your comment on Ubuntu messing up your Windows boot loader most newer computers come with UEFI boot mode, but Linux will install Grub or Grub2. If you remove the partitions of Ubuntu from one hard drive you will need to use a Windows install CD or USB to repair the MBR for Windows. You can do this by doing the following:

  1. Insert repair or installation media
  2. Choose "Repair"
  3. Then choose Troubleshoot>Advanced>Command Prompt
  4. Enter bootrec.exe /fix mbr

This will repair your Windows boot loader.

Joe
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