Hey everyone! I'm thinking about switching from Windows 11 to Linux but want to take it slow and try dual booting first. I considered installing Linux on the same SSD as Windows, but my 250GB drive is too small to partition effectively. So, I'm planning to buy a second SSD (around 250GB) for Linux.
I'm a bit confused about how this setup would work with my existing drives. My current setup includes the Windows SSD with some software, an NVMe drive for games (mainly from Steam and Epic), and an HDD for storage. Will Linux recognize these other drives? They're all formatted as NTFS.
Also, is it normal to have this many drives when using Linux, or do most people just stick to one SSD for everything and use an HDD for extra storage? Thanks for any insights you can share!
5 Answers
Overall, your dual boot will work best if you keep things organized and follow the proper setup guidelines!
You can definitely dual boot by installing each OS on separate drives, and using UEFI to choose which one to boot. This keeps them isolated, so they won't interfere with each other. But be cautious with games on Linux—it's best not to keep them on NTFS drives, even though there are some tricky ways to make it work if you're not familiar with it.
It's advisable to format your Linux drive with 'ext4'; it's the standard for Linux and can help with performance and compatibility.
Linux will recognize your other drives as long as they aren't encrypted. So, you should have easy access to your NVMe and HDD. However, I wouldn't recommend running games from NTFS drives since that can lead to issues.
Using UEFI really simplifies things and is supported by all modern motherboards since Windows 8. The motherboard looks for an EFI System Partition (ESP) to boot. This is a FAT32 partition that helps the system identify bootable OSes. Linux distros typically add a boot entry for Windows in the GRUB menu too, so you can easily switch between OSes. Just to give you an idea, I've got a system with 7 drives that create a huge 26TB storage array!
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