Install Ubuntu on seperate Harddrive while already Dual-Booting

LetsFailNoob

10/9/23, 4:04 PM

So this might seem like an oddly specific question, but I need to install Ubuntu 18.04 for University and could not really find anything that would help me. I already dual-Boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04. However the harddrive on which the dual-boot is installed does not have enough space left to install another OS. I tried installing Ubuntu 18.04 on another drive but with no success. That's why I'd need some help on how to get things running.

To clear up my harddrive-situation and where I want to install things:

dev/sdb: Windows 10 & Ubuntu 20.04 (this is also the drive I boot from currently)
dev/sda: Is where I want to install Ubuntu 18.04, but there is some data on there already (which is used for storing some files on windows).

I'm kind of stuck on how to proceed, since my attempts all failed. What I did was creating two new partitions on dev/sda (one root-partition, one efi-partition), but I was not able to boot from there, nor did it show up in my current grub2. Did I already do something wrong here, or do I need to add something to my current bootloader? I'm happy for any instructions/tips/suggestions on how to do it properly.

2 + 3

partitioning

dual-boot

LetsFailNoob

10/9/23, 4:26 PM

Yeah I guess that would work, but if a solution exists without deleting those files this would be great!

LetsFailNoob

10/9/23, 4:38 PM

Well since I do need the performance a VM is sadly no option. I also did select Something Else during installation and no files (as far as I could tell) were deleted. However it seems that what I did actually worked, but the grub bootloader did not update automatically.

LetsFailNoob

10/9/23, 4:41 PM

Yes, I already answered the post, in case anyone has the same issue.

Score:0

Ubuntu

LetsFailNoob

10/9/23, 4:41 PM

It seemed like what I did actually was correct and the final stepped that was missing was adding the partition to grub.

For this I installed GRUB Customizer[1] which actually already detected the new installation and all I had to do was to store the new configuration. Afterwards I was able to boot to my new installation. [1]: https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/GRUB_Customizer/

+ 0

Score:0

Ubuntu

Ken

10/10/23, 12:56 AM

Another option would be to install the 18.04 OS to a USB stick as a persistent system.
Several years ago I had the best luck doing these steps with 18.04 to make sure that update-grub didn't do anything to my main HD. For this you will need 2 USB thumb drives.

Create an 18.04 .iso image to a USB drive.
Optional, but a good idea: Backup you existing OS(s).
Turn off and unplug the computer, then completely disconnect your hard drive.
Reboot using USB with the .iso image you just created. You may need to change your BIOS boot order to boot from the USB.
Perform the 18.04 installation to a second USB drive. This will treat the second USB drive like a primary drive during the install.
After the install, turn off and unplug computer and reconnect your main hard drive.
Now you will have a stand alone USB drive with 18.04 on it that you can mess around with and it won't affect your existing system.

+ 0

Elon Musk

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EN: Install Ubuntu on seperate Harddrive while already Dual-Booting

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