Arch Linux

kaijday

Member

Registered: 2014-01-20

Posts: 21

Dual boot, multiple hard-drives

I have two drives:

SDA -> Windows
SDB - > Arch

Windows was first installed and then I installed Arch to SDB yesterday and installed GRUB and setup GRUB on the SDB HDD. On boot, my pc still boots into windows. Just wondering, was I right to install GRUB to my Arch HDD or should I have installed it to my Windows HDD?

Or should I just try installing again and see if it works second time round?

Thanks,
Kai

runical

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2012-03-03

Posts: 896

Re: Dual boot, multiple hard-drives

If I am not mistaken, the bootloader is loaded from the HDD that is configured as the first boot device in the BIOS of EFI setup. If SDB is not configured to boot before SDA, you will only load the Windows bootloader and not GRUB.

So, there are 2 options to correct this:
1) Set SDB as the first boot device (which might mess with the drive names).
2) Install your bootloader to SDA and configure accordingly (but this will destroy the windows bootloader).

Please do your research before trying anything though, I am not 100% sure

---

For all your makepkg signature checking troubles

teateawhy

Member

From: GER

Registered: 2012-03-05

Posts: 1,138

Website

Re: Dual boot, multiple hard-drives

Even without changing anything, you can still boot into arch. You need to press a key during boot when the BIOS splash screen shows, it is usually f12 or similar, and select to boot from the SDB HDD.