tutorial for dual boot install on 2 hard disks?

[AndyMH]

If you are dual booting with win you want to install mint in the same mode as win. That way grub (the linux bootloader) will find win and when you boot give you a menu giving you the choice of either mint or win. If you have win booting UEFI and mint booting legacy (or vice-versa), this won't happen and the only way to switch between OSes is to go into BIOS each time.

Dual boot in legacy mode with separate drives is simpler to do than with UEFI. You would normally format the drive for mint with a legacy partition table (you can do it with a gpt partition table but need to create a bios_grub partition), create the ext4 partitions you need for linux as above. You don't need an EFI partition. Install with 'something else' and point the installer at the partitions you created and tell it what to use them for. Make sure at the bottom of the screen you point the installer at the drive to install grub (probably sdb, it will default to sda which is likely to be your win drive). Thats it! No need to mess around with disconnecting the win drive or un-setting flags on the EFI partition on the win drive. The installer behaves itself and does what it is told, unlike a UEFI install on separate drives.

All my laptops boot in legacy mode, my desktop boots UEFI only because I had no choice.

[jabongzki]

If you are dual booting with win you want to install mint in the same mode as win. That way grub (the linux bootloader) will find win and when you boot give you a menu giving you the choice of either mint or win. If you have win booting UEFI and mint booting legacy (or vice-versa), this won't happen and the only way to switch between OSes is to go into BIOS each time.

would it matter if the bios doesnt see the second hdd?

because i could only boot from the 2nd hdd to it by going to boot menu and then selecting it from there.

You would normally format the drive for mint with a legacy partition table (

whats a legacy partition table? you mean mbr?

create the ext4 partitions you need for linux as above.

logical or primary?

[AndyMH]

would it matter if the bios doesnt see the second hdd?
because i could only boot from the 2nd hdd to it by going to boot menu and then selecting it from there.

What boot menu?

whats a legacy partition table? you mean mbr?

Yes, same thing, also called msdos or just dos.

You started this topic stating you were booting UEFI, so why are you now asking about legacy boot?

[jabongzki]

What boot menu?

this boot menu...
https://ibb.co/VHc4qqq
on an asus bios i can only boot to the second hdd by pressing F8 and then selecting the 2nd hdd from there.
and so im asking if it would matter if my bios only sees or displays the 1st hdd?

You started this topic stating you were booting UEFI, so why are you now asking about legacy boot?

because my usb drive says uefi. you know, theres little wording there that says uefi. i think you can see on the picture above.
i thought that was it.
and then i thankfully came across this...
https://itsfoss.com/check-uefi-or-bios/
and when i did what it said, it says that my windows was installed using a legacy bios.
and thats the reason for the additional questions.

[AndyMH]

I would have another look in BIOS, if you can get the one-time boot menu with F8, almost certainly there is somewhere in BIOS you can change the boot order. Unfortunately, all BIOS are different and manufacturers rarely provide detailed info on their BIOS.

In your image - looks like drive logo with UEFI label = UEFI boot and drive logo without label = legacy boot and you change whether you want legacy or UEFI by changing the order of the two logos. Can you click on the logo to get the boot order or does F7 (the advanced settings) give you more options? I'm pretty sure it's in there somewhere.

Luckily for you, legacy boot on a second drive is easier than UEFI as my earlier post.

You need to format the drive with a legacy/msdos/mbr partition table. You can do this in gparted running from the mint install stick.

Because legacy is a very old standard (dates back to the 1980's) it has limitations:

• Max drive size and partition size of 2TB, above that you need to use a GPT partition table.

• A max of four primary partitions. This became a real constraint early on so they introduced the concept of an extended partition. So you can have a max of three primary partitions and one extended partition. You put 'logical' partitions inside the extended partition. This way you can have more than four partitions. All the extended partition really is is an entry in the main partition table pointing at another partition table somewhere on the drive.

If you need four or more partitions then you will need to use an extended partition and logical partitions. This is unlikely. I boot legacy and my main system drive has three partitions - /, /home and swap. They are all primary partitions.

When you install mint do not forget to make sure that grub is installed on your second drive, probably sdb. This is the dropdown bottom right on the screen after selecting 'something else', you select the drive not a partition, e.g. sdb, not sdb1. This way you can boot mint completely independent of the drive with win on it (and you need to sort out the boot order so that your mint drive is top of the boot list).

[jabongzki]

I would have another look in BIOS, if you can get the one-time boot menu with F8, almost certainly there is somewhere in BIOS you can change the boot order.

i could probably do this.

In your image - looks like drive logo with UEFI label = UEFI boot and drive logo without label = legacy boot and you change whether you want legacy or UEFI by changing the order of the two logos. Can you click on the logo to get the boot order or does F7 (the advanced settings) give you more options? I'm pretty sure it's in there somewhere.

actually , the one WITHOUT the uefi label is the win drive, and the one WITH the uefi label is the flash drive.
and so im asking if it matters if bios doesnt show the 2nd hdd.

you need to sort out the boot order so that your mint drive is top of the boot list).

how do i sort this out? is it shown? if it is not on top, how do i move it on top?

[AndyMH]

how do i sort this out? is it shown? if it is not on top, how do i move it on top?

First you have to find it, what does F7 (the advanced settings) do?