Any viable option if you can’t install 2 drives? My laptop only allows one. It currently has Win10 on it and I’m hoping to replace it with Linux with an option to boot into Windows when needed, especially for my wife who isn’t as technical or experienced with Linux. Not sure if there’s anyway to do it without Windows nuking my setup.
Simply dual-booting is viable. My Win10 + Arch worked well for over a year. If you’re worried about Windows Update nuking the EFI partition, you can clone a backup of just that partition (dd or a dedicated tool like Clonezilla) that you can then restore from a live environment if needed. Another option, if the disk becomes unbootable, is to boot into a live environment from a USB stick and simply reinstall GRUB into the EFI partition.
(edit) It’s also a good idea to reduce the frequency of forced updates. You can do that using WinUtil.
Thank you. I think my biggest concern is that I can’t fix it when it breaks, simply due to lack of experience. I’ve fixed busted Windows partitions and boot issues, but never Linux because I’ve just never had an issue with the installs I have and don’t have nearly the same number of years under my belt with it.
As you said I think first order of business is a functional bootable USB which I can use to both backup and restore the partition, and I need to do a practice run restore to prove it works and that I know what I’m doing before I need it.
Any viable option if you can’t install 2 drives? My laptop only allows one. It currently has Win10 on it and I’m hoping to replace it with Linux with an option to boot into Windows when needed, especially for my wife who isn’t as technical or experienced with Linux. Not sure if there’s anyway to do it without Windows nuking my setup.
Simply dual-booting is viable. My Win10 + Arch worked well for over a year. If you’re worried about Windows Update nuking the EFI partition, you can clone a backup of just that partition (
ddor a dedicated tool like Clonezilla) that you can then restore from a live environment if needed. Another option, if the disk becomes unbootable, is to boot into a live environment from a USB stick and simply reinstall GRUB into the EFI partition.(edit) It’s also a good idea to reduce the frequency of forced updates. You can do that using WinUtil.
Thank you. I think my biggest concern is that I can’t fix it when it breaks, simply due to lack of experience. I’ve fixed busted Windows partitions and boot issues, but never Linux because I’ve just never had an issue with the installs I have and don’t have nearly the same number of years under my belt with it.
As you said I think first order of business is a functional bootable USB which I can use to both backup and restore the partition, and I need to do a practice run restore to prove it works and that I know what I’m doing before I need it.