about dual booting safely
about dual booting safely
I've been experimenting with Manjaro and Garuda inside VM for several weeks now. I'm considering a full commit. For work and gaming, I still need Adobe and use anti-cheat tools, so I'm keeping Windows. I've heard on the forum that running Windows alongside another OS in dual boot can be risky—random updates might mess with the other system. So if I turn off automatic updates completely, is it safe to run Garuda as a second OS? If so, how can I protect Garuda during manual updates? Cheers.
This scenario seems unlikely, but if both drives are on the same partition and the MBR remains intact, the Linux bootloader might be affected. A simple solution is to wipe it. For added security, move Windows to a different drive before proceeding and choose your boot option in the BIOS.
Possible issues may include a minor corruption of boot configurations (bootmgr.efi might be altering settings unexpectedly—this hasn't happened to me). Generally, it's just an annoyance, and using a different drive won't likely resolve the problem if it doesn't occur.
Issues arise when Windows overwrites the boot partition during dual booting on one drive. Correcting this is possible but often troublesome. The problem disappears when using distinct drives, as each system operates independently without sharing a boot partition.
Refers to the initial part of a computer's storage where the operating system is loaded.
Windows could make other operating systems unstartable, though it's improbable to erase their data. An update might bring some hassle, forcing you to repair it so your other OS can boot again, but serious data loss is unlikely. If Garuda runs on a distinct hard drive, disconnect it before updating Windows. Otherwise, if you're comfortable with Arch-based systems, you can perform a standard Arch installation inside a virtual machine. The same tools used for Arch installation—mounting the system, entering chroot, and installing the bootloader—apply to Arch distributions too. After completing one repair, you can switch back to Garuda and handle EFI or MBR issues confidently without a full reinstall. If this seems overwhelming, using a separate physical drive is perfectly fine.