I've just installed Linux Mint on a separate drive without touching my Windows 11 drive, and now I can choose which OS to boot via UEFI settings. Is there a way to get a boot selection screen instead? Do both operating systems need to be on the same drive for that? Also, I've got a 4TB SSD that I want to use to store files accessible from both OSs. Can I just make it a single NTFS partition, or do I need to set it up differently? Lastly, I noticed that my 4TB drive didn't show up in Linux Mint; tools like Disks, GParted, and the terminal commands didn't help, but it works fine on Windows 11.
4 Answers
To set up your systems, keep both OS drives connected, and check out this guide on adding new OSs to GRUB: [Baeldung Guide](https://www.baeldung.com/linux/grub-bootloader-add-new-os). Make Linux the primary boot choice in UEFI, otherwise if Windows boots first, GRUB won’t show up for you to choose the OS. Also, remember to check your motherboard's manual for quick OS switching keys during boot—it's often F11 for some brands.
When checking if your Windows drive is visible in GParted, look for entries in /dev. If you have multiple drives, you should see both sda and sdb listed. If not, double-check your connections and settings.
Make sure to format that 4TB drive as NTFS so Windows can access it. After it’s formatted, it should pop up in Linux Mint as a mountable drive. To have it automatically mount at boot, you'll need to add an entry in your /etc/fstab. Example entry:
/dev/sdX /media/Data ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
Just replace X with your drive ID, and create the /media/Data directory where you want it mounted! You could even make it in your home directory for easier access.
It sounds like your drive might be in RAID mode instead of AHCI, which could explain why Linux Mint isn't recognizing it. You can check this in your UEFI settings. Once your drive is recognized, Linux can read and write to NTFS without issue! For getting a boot menu, you could install `rEFInd`, which is straightforward and auto-configures your boot options. If you want to use GRUB, just make sure to enable `os-prober` and run `update-grub` again after booting into Mint to add the Windows option.
Great points! Just to add, while Linux does support NTFS, there can be quirks involved. The Arch Wiki has some solid info on that.
I see what you're saying about RST/Raid! I didn’t think of that. Thanks for the tip!