Having OS's on different drives instead of dual booting?

I'm currently running Windows 10 and for a time I was Dual booting Linux Mint and although I liked Linux I didn't like dual booting and removed Linux and Grub etc.

I want to now install Linux on its own drive and physically swap the drives over depending on what OS I want to use. My guess is I'll probably just swap them over once or twice a week. I'd like to make this procedure as painless as possible, I'm old school and use a standard bios boot instead of efi.

As anybody tried this and does Windows 10 cause any issues? Also is there some sort of 2.5" external stand alone bay available that as a Sata connection? All the ones I've seen are USB or PC mountable.

Any input appreciated

You don't need to physically swap drives. On most motherboards, you can press a key on startup (usually F12) and tell it which drive to boot from.

I've tried that before and Windows 10 pick up the presence of another OS (Windows 7) and proceeded to do some funky dual boot thing!

Firstly, why don't you want to dual boot? You can do that on 2 seperate drives fine, and no faffing needed?

But if you must, as marc says, you can use the boot options from the BIOS to chose which drive to boot. In that case you would need to disconnect each drive in turn when installing the OS to ensure the boot detail is stored on the correct for each one.

Thanks for the replies,

OK so if I for example install Linux, Windows 10 and 7 to 3 separate drives one plugged in at a time then after that I 'll be able to have them all connected and select which drive to boot from through bios / F11 and they won't interfare with each other so to speak?

Yup. Having other drives connected when installing often does unexpected things so it's always advisable to disconnect.

I installed Mint without disconnecting anything, no probs. at all...

marc2003 said:

Yup. Having other drives connected when installing often does unexpected things so it's always advisable to disconnect.

Click to expand...

+1. Always disconnect other hard drives when installing an OS for the first time. Then reconnect them once the OS install is complete and just use the bios to select which hard drive to boot from.

Thanks for the input guys, I've decided not to bother with Windows 7. I've been experimenting with mint and Ubuntu and I'm definitely sticking with mint. I've just ordered another 250GB evo 850 SSD for The Mint install as I've been using HDD to experiment with, Windows 10 is also on its own 850 Evo.

This is what you should do.

Connect up only drive A.
Install Windows to drive A.
Disconnect drive A

Connect up only drive B.
Install Linux to drive B.

Connect up drive A, so A and B are both in.

Use the bios to set the one you want to usually boot to as the primary boot drive.

When you want to boot into the other OS, reboot PC, hit the 'Boot Selection Key', typically ESC,F8,F12 (depends on the motherboard) and then pick the other drive.

Nice and clean, two independant OS drives without the need to mess with boot files.

Thanks bledd that's exactly how I figured it, I tested the theory out using Mint on a normal HDD and it works great and IMO a lot more elegant than grub. I can turn PC on and it will boot straight in to Windows 10 and the Mint drive is completely invisible. However if I want to boot in to Mint I just have to press F11 on powering on and select drive

Another thing I'd like to try when I get the new SSD is to encrypt the drive but I'm not sure how that works in Linux?

Tbh, I never bother with encryption

Easier than I thought, the option to encrypt the drive is a simple tick box on Mint install, how I missed it I don't know!

Anyway all up and running now. Boots straight in to Windows unless I press F11 and select Mint