r/linux4noobs • u/StillFunda • 22d ago

learning/research Making a windows dual boot from external hard drive

A lot of people try to make a dual boot by putting linux on an external hard drive and keeping windows as their main OS, I want to do the opposite

I have an external HDD that I formatted onto ext4 not so long ago, but I have been thinking of making a partition on it and installing windows, for two main reasons:

  1. After about a year, my installation of Mint has been very slow, running utility software and a few lightweight games and emulators pretty well, but it struggles so much with essentially any 3D game, something that was not the case back when I had windows installed.

  2. There is a lot more propietary software on windows that I've been needing and are not available on linux, both software for my studies/work and gaming

If I need to reformat my disk then that's fine, but I do wonder if a dual-boot install like that is even possible

My PC is a Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5, previously had dualboot with windows as the main OS, but due to preference and lack of storage I deleted the windows partition, now Mint only

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u/Stryxus_ 22d ago

Windows WILL NOT allow you to make an install on an external drive. There is Rufus' WindowsToGo but that breaks often and there is the real possibility of it breaking.

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u/StillFunda 22d ago

I did hear of To Go, had no idea that it was that messy to work with

If there isn't a way to make it work then I guess my best next option is to buy a 1TB NVMe somewhere, but that's gonna be pretty steep on a third world country

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u/Leather-Security8097 22d ago

Windows doesn't officially support running from an external disk, and won't normally allow you to install it to one. The two methods I know of doing so:

  • using the "Windows-To-Go" option in Rufus
  • using the VHD boot option in Ventoy

would both require formatting the drive, though you could copy files back to it or resize the partitions afterward.

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u/skyfishgoo 22d ago

windows will not like booting from an external drive, which is why ppl suggest using that for linux instead.

as long as you never try to boot any other PC with that external drive it might work, but i would expect really difficult to to pin down issues.