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I would like to install both Ubuntu and Windows on the same PC. I would like to use Ubuntu as my primary OS, and have Windows available to run things that only run on Windows.

I would like to start fresh on both OSs and I have no data that I need to keep. I also would like to have it so that when I boot, I can choose which OS to run, without having to go into the BIOS/UEFI settings. Is this possible?

Available storage

  • I have a 1TB spinning hard drive
  • I have a Samsung EVO 850 SSD hard drive (500GB)
  • I have a Samsung EVO 950 M.2 SSD hard drive (500GB)

Ideally each OS will reside on it's own SSD but I am not sure if I can avoid going into the BIOS to pick an OS that way, so if it needs to be on the same SSD with a partition then so be it. I would like the 1TB HDD to be visible to both OSs for general purpose usage.

So the questions are

  1. How do I do this? (admittedly a broad question)
  2. Do I put both OSs on the same SSD or on different SSDs?
  3. Which OS do I install first?

I noticed that when I installed Windows 10 on the M.2 SSD a few days ago, I had to disconnect all other hard drives or Windows got confused. Maybe the easiest way to do this is to disconnect all drives except the M.2, install Windows using the whole SSD. Then run the Ubuntu installer (without reconnecting the the rest of the drives) and adjust the partition and let the installer do it's thing. Hopefully nothing will get confused when I reconnect the drives again.

As an aside, ever since installing Windows on the M.2 (EVO 950), the previous installation of Ubuntu (which resides on the EVO 850) now boots to a purple blank screen. And the nomodeset trick does not resolve the issue.

Advice please.

Chechy Levas
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  • Also it doesn't matter where you install one and the other and the drives are very similar. If one was an HDD then I would say install both in the SSD and use the HDD as a shared media/data partition. –  Dec 01 '17 at 09:27
  • @MichaelBay, what do you mean by different modes? – Chechy Levas Dec 01 '17 at 09:35
  • I mean UEFI vs Legacy/CSM ("BIOS"). Any factory installed Windows 10 is in UEFI mode and so should be Ubuntu (if you want to use Grub to dual boot). User installed OSes can be anything, it mostly depends on how you boot the installer, if UEFI+Legacy are set. For better results change it to UEFI only. That assures you'll be installing both OSes in the proper mode. Also better to disable Secure Boot. Everything is in the linked question therefore you should know by now that there are different modes for modern hardware and should have guessed what happened. –  Dec 01 '17 at 10:01
  • And when Windows is "confused" (not really, users are, Windows not so much) it's up to you to tell it where it should be installed, creating partition(s) directly in the dialog if it must be (but installing Windows is off topic anyway so I digress). –  Dec 01 '17 at 10:03

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