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swap SSD to test run Linux?
(beehaw.org)
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this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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OP specifically said they don't want to dual boot, and I honestly understand why they would say that.
When you dual boot you need to worry about what bootloader is in use and how it is set up. You might find yourself in a situation where you later decide to move fully to Linux and use the old Windows drive as storage but you can't because if you wipe it then everything stops working.
Windows has even been known to destroy dual boot setups occasionally during Windows updates.
All very solveable if you have the right knowledge, but if you want to keep your life simple then swapping hardware has guaranteed safety (nothing can go wrong with the contents if a drive if it's not plugged in, after all) and it's very predictable and understandable.
You just need to run the installation with one drive at a time if you want to be extra sure, then each will have its own boot partition and they can still work together, for example I have 3 drives, one Linux, one Windows and one storage, the Linux one has GRUB on it and it detects the bootloader on the Windows drive just fine so you can select either from that or the UEFI boot selector. Never had updates scramble anything for neither of the two systems
I'm not sure what all those words mean so I'm not gunna do that. I might learn these things later but I'm trying not to frontload a lot of the learning.
That's fair, I won't say that it's not as complicated as it sounds because I don't know what you know, but if you want it put into simple words, it's the following:
Anyways don't pressure yourself into doing any of that if you don't feel comfortable with it, of course.
One step at a time, the important thing is you're satisfied with what you have and that it's functional to your workflow