Installing on second SSD (was "solved" but not really)

[krauster]

I've read the installation guide but still have some questions because things don't look exactly how I was expecting at this point and I don't want to go forward not knowing what's going on and mess up my current windows setup.

I've installed mint multiple times on single SSD computers. Simple. Just download mint iso. Open Etcher and write a bootable flash drive. Make sure the bios on the old laptops is set to boot from flashdrive. Insert the drive, boot. I see the instal linux icon on the desktop and I can install to the SSD and I'm done.

Just bought a used laptop with two SSDs. Win10 on one. I want to put Mint on the other. It's a year old laptop, Acer Nitro 5. It uses the UEFI BIOS.

Downloaded Mint, used Etcher to put it on the USB3 flashdrive. The laptop appears to have 1 USB3 and 2 USB2 ports. If I put the flashdrive in either the USB2 or USB3 drives and hit F12 during boot I get a Boot Manager window from the BIOS with a choice of Limpus lite or Windows Boot Manager. If I select Limpus lite I get grub with four choices.
- Start Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon 64-bit
- Start Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon 64-bit (compatiblity mode)
- OEM install (for manufacturers)
- Check the integrity of the medium

If I select either of the two first Linux Mint options it takes at four or five minutes to load and then runs really really slow. It does eventually make a desktop and puts the install linux icon there but I have not tried selecting that yet.

I don't want to select the install linux icon to install linux at this point. I figure it would take forever and I forget during that installation whether I get a chance to tell it where to install, because I need to make sure I select the correct SSD and not be making a mistake that would blow away the Win10 on the wrong SSD.

BTW, if I boot to Windows I see Disk0 as the D: and Disk1 as the C: with windows on it.

What am I missing? Is it something in the Acer BIOS (F2) that I need to do first?

What is slowing the flashdrive down?
Is the Limpus lite doing something weird? I don't know where that Limpus lite came from. I bought the computer from some guy that said he bought it new and I don't think he was a linux guy.

[RIH]

There are numerous accounts on the web of people creating a large variety of different Linux operating systems on an USB & then it being identified as Linpus Lite by their computer.
All that reported that they went on to install, installed the actual iso that they had downloaded, not Linpus Lite.

From Wikipedia it seems that there is some sort of unwanted tie-up between Acer & Linpus Lite..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linpus_Linux

Nagware
The Linpus system contains not only the free and open source operating system, but also Acer-specific "shareware" - users classify this as "nagware," because it asks you to register on Acer's website and purchase a full version.[citation needed] The fact that the Acer distribution contains this software prevents the system from being considered a fully free/open operating system.

Have no idea, sorry, why you are experiencing slowness, although if it is a USB 2 port (& not 3) then that might explain it..

[AndyMH]

Beware, I assume you want both drives capable of booting independently? I assume you are booting in UEFI mode. There is a bug in the installer and it will install grub (the bootloader) to the first drive it finds, irrespective of what you tell it to do, which will probably be your win drive. If you are happy with this, fine. If not, you need to either:

• disconnect your win drive before install, reconnect afterwards, or

• disable the boot and esp flags on the EFI partition in your win drive before installing mint and re-enable afterwards.

Personally, with dual boot on separate drives I prefer to pre-partition the drives beforehand with gparted and install mint with the 'something else' option. More guidance can be provided if needed.

[krauster]

Have no idea, sorry, why you are experiencing slowness, although if it is a USB 2 port (& not 3) then that might explain it..

It boots and runs unuseably slowly on all of the USB ports. I do remember creating the flashdrive on the USB2 ports before I was aware that some of the ports were USB2 and one was USB3, but I don't think that would be the problem for why it runs so slowly. My old laptops with USB2 run Mint from a USB2 flashdrive pretty well.
Maybe it has something to do with that limpus lite boot loader.

[krauster]

Beware, I assume you want both drives capable of booting independently? I assume you are booting in UEFI mode. There is a bug in the installer and it will install grub (the bootloader) to the first drive it finds, irrespective of what you tell it to do, which will probably be your win drive. If you are happy with this, fine. If not, you need to either:

• disconnect your win drive before install, reconnect afterwards, or

• disable the boot and esp flags on the EFI partition in your win drive before installing mint and re-enable afterwards.

Personally, with dual boot on separate drives I prefer to pre-partition the drives beforehand with gparted and install mint with the 'something else' option. More guidance can be provided if needed.

- Yes, I am booting UEFI mode.

- I would like to be able to boot to Mint by default and if I want to run Windows once in a while I would shutdown Mint, restart the laptop and hit a function key to get to a selection to select Windows to load. That is the ideal but if it requires always making the selection at boot I can live with that, but that is not preferred.

- when you say that there is a bug in the installer do you mean a bug in the linuxmint-20.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso file? Your warning about the installer writing over stuff on the first drive it sees is what I am worried about if the first drive is the windows drive.
Here's images of what the drives are and the settings:

If you are suggesting prepartitioning the second drive ahead of time I will have to do that in windows, right?

[AndyMH]

- I would like to be able to boot to Mint by default and if I want to run Windows once in a while I would shutdown Mint, restart the laptop and hit a function key to get to a selection to select Windows to load. That is the ideal but if it requires always making the selection at boot I can live with that, but that is not preferred.

Mint will put itself at the top of the BIOS boot list so the PC should automatically boot into mint. If it doesn't move mint (with UEFI boot it will show as 'ubuntu') to the top of the boot list.

With either of the methods outlined in my previous post mint will not find windows during install, so you would need to boot into windows by changing BIOS or pressing F12 on boot to get your 'one time' boot list (same as a thinkpad). This can be changed, if you want, so that you get a grub menu on boot giving you the choice (with mint as the default). That is how my Thinkpad T430's are set up - I get a grub menu and if I do nothing, after 10 seconds it boots into mint.

If you are happy for grub (the bootloader) to be installed on your win drive and don't disconnect the win drive or un-set flags as outlined, the installer will find win and you will get the grub menu on boot. This can be changed after installation so it boots straight into mint without showing the menu.

when you say that there is a bug in the installer do you mean a bug in the linuxmint-20.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso file? Your warning about the installer writing over stuff on the first drive it sees is what I am worried about if the first drive is the windows drive.

Yes. Mint uses the same installer as ubuntu, called ubiquity. Ubuntu have plans to change this (from memory, it dates from 2005 ) so mint might use the replacement (which will, no doubt, come with its own problems) in the next major release, i.e. LM21.0, probably sometime in 2022. The bug exists in the LM20.2 iso and will still be there with LM20.3 whenever that gets released.

You don't need to worry about it writing over stuff on your win drive. All it does is add the grub bootloader files into a ubuntu folder in the EFI partition, the windows bootloader is still there. The downside is that you are dependent on your win drive to boot mint, so if that drive dies... Hence the comment about being able to boot either drive independently.

If you are suggesting prepartitioning the second drive ahead of time I will have to do that in windows, right?

No. You would boot the stick that you have burnt the mint iso to and run gparted (the linux partition editor) on that. Win doesn't understand linux filesystems.

Good luck with the acer, one advantage of using second hand (old) thinkpads is that they play nice with linux, they are also cheap

[krauster]

Interesting development:
I let the acer boot from the flashdrive and walked away for a while. When I came back after a much longer period, like 20 minutes it actually was up and running from the flashdrive at a normal quick speed. No delays that I was seeing when I had only waited about 10 minutes.

So I started to proceed with the Install Linux icon on the desktop and after I did the language and the wifi connection. I have hit up on this and need to figure out what to do.

Apparently I need to turn the computer off, start it and F2 to get to the BIOS and turn off RST, which when I look it up is a RAID setting? UPDATE: The problem now though is that I don't see a setting in the BIOS to turn off RST or anything related to RAID.

Maybe the slow boot from the flashdrive has to do with the RAID setting?

And does this complicate anything with the issue of keeping Windows on one drive and installing MInt on another?

[kato181]

I have a acer swift 3 laptop, when you boot into the bios, hit ctrl+S and it you can disable rst and select ahci
It is a damn nuisance acer doing this.

[krauster]

I restarted into the BIOS and at the Main tab I hit ctrl+5 and that added an extra SATA item in the list of settings. It gives three option:
ACHI, Optain without RAID, and Optain with RAID. I think it was set to the Optain with RAID.
So I changed it to ACHI, saved and exited. Rebooted.

It fails boot with the ACHI selection. It gets to a windows blue screen and says something is wrong and tries to fix it but can't.

Fortunately after a reboot and F2 and ctrl+5 I'm able to change it back from ACHI and it does boot to Windows. In the troubleshooting option of the blue screen there is an option to insert a windows recovery drive, so maybe I better make one of those (living dangerously so far). Maybe I can reload windows from a recovery drive with ACHI set?

[kato181]

Don't forget to disable the following..
Disable secure boot
Disable fast boot

[krauster]

Don't forget to disable the following..
Sata mode AHCI
Disable secure boot
Disable fast boot

I assume you mean set SATA to AHCI, not disable it, as the other choices for Optain with or without RAID don't get me anywhere.
I can Disable fast boot.
I can't arrow down to the secure boot setting to disable it. Maybe because I need to create a Supervisor, User, and/or HDD3 password? Not sure.

[kato181]

Yes it was..Fat fingers.
yes you have to set a password to get to disable secure boot.

[krauster]

Do I set passwords for all three - supervisor, user and hdd3?

And does that mean I will need to enter that password to boot or just to get into the BIOS? Or do I clear that after I get mint installed on the service SSD?

[AndyMH]

Suggest you fix windows booting under AHCI first before trying to install mint. You may have to re-install win or there maybe some way of fixing it without a re-install. But for that you are on the wrong forum . Maybe a windows forum somewhere...

EDIT - found one:
https://support.thinkcritical.com/kb/ar ... de-to-ahci

[kato181]

Do I set passwords for all three - supervisor, user and hdd3?

And does that mean I will need to enter that password to boot or just to get into the BIOS? Or do I clear that after I get mint installed on the service SSD?

Yes only for supervisor and yes only to get into the bios
I would suggest you create a recovery windows media first before you carry on.

[krauster]

Success, but in a round about way, and not complete, yet.

I made a windows recovery drive on a flashdrive.
I then started to try the bcdedit stuff that was on the extremely relevant link that AndyMH provided. But I couldn't get it to work. Still had problems that I couldn't figure out and I was kind of in a jam with win10 only booting to safe mode but I couldnt even figure out how to get a wifi connection while in safe mode. Seems like maybe it was missing drivers or something.

With the win10 recovery flashdrive in hand and having only bought this laptop last week I realized I wouldn't be losing much if I just reinstalled windows on it. So with the BIOS changed from the Optain stuff to ACHI (and thanks for the tip about needing to hit cntl+S while on the Main tab of the BIOS, I would have been really stuck without learning that) I then, from the safe mode boot, was able to reinstall windows from the recovery flashdrive.

With windows installed and proving to myself that it would reboot fine and showed the two drives I then shut it down. Installed the Mint .iso flashdrive and it booted very quickly to that. (I think I had to make a choice from GRUB screen at that point) and then Mint booted. I ran the Install Linux on the desktop and Mint 20 installed on the second drive. Shut it down and proved to myself that both systems are bootable.

When I start the computer I get the Acer loading icon for a second and then it brings up the Grub and by default boots to Mint, but I can select down to Windows boot manager to get into windows.
So thanks for the help.

Now I have other problems with the mint install. I have a noisy high pitch coming from the analog headphone output to a cheap set of power external speakers. I am researching that at the Acer site but will probably describe it in a different post here if I don't find a solution.

Anyway, thanks for the help that allowed me to get Mint onto the second drive. I think it is mostly working.

[AndyMH]

Did you either remove the win drive or disable the esp & boot flags on the EFI partition in that drive before installing mint? If not grub will have installed to the win drive. Doesn't stop it working, just means that you are dependent on the win drive to boot mint.

[krauster]

Did you either remove the win drive or disable the esp & boot flags on the EFI partition in that drive before installing mint? If not grub will have installed to the win drive. Doesn't stop it working, just means that you are dependent on the win drive to boot mint.

I didn't remove the windows drive. And I don't really know what is meant by setting the esp and boot flags on the EFI partition. Do you mean the secure boot and fast boot settings in the BIOS? Not sure what they were set when I did the install.

I could do this fresh install of win10 and MInt again at this point as I haven't done much tweaking of either in the last day.
Here is what the drives look like in Windows Disk Manager:

sorry for the bad images. I have to compress them a lot to get them to the size limit this forum accepts.

And here is what I see on the two drives when booting into Linux. I suspect this isn't ideal but it works.

[jackkileen]

- I would like to be able to boot to Mint by default and if I want to run Windows once in a while I would shutdown Mint, restart the laptop and hit a function key to get to a selection to select Windows to load. That is the ideal but if it requires always making the selection at boot I can live with that, but that is not preferred.

Just my opinion, but after using Linux and Windows dual booting for 2 years, I decided to completely remove all things Windows and use Linux as my only OS.
I installed Windows on a removable drive for those few times I need it for whatever reason.

Couldn't be happier I took this route instead of continually having to deal with dual boot problems with Linux and Windows

I also found, the longer I used Linux exclusively the less I need Windows.

[krauster]

I agree. The more I use Mint the less inclined I am to want to use windows. With the exception of Solidworks CAD there is nothing i ever do that can't be done easily in Mint. (and I don't even have a license of SW anymore so that's not relevant anyway).

I am just trying to get dual boot working to learn about it. - and rather than learning much, I am learning what I don't know, which is a lot). I'll probably not bother booting to Windows that often.