Win11: Three distinct installations across three partitions using the same SSD? Possible methods.
Win11: Three distinct installations across three partitions using the same SSD? Possible methods.
Ideally I’d have three distinct Windows installations on nvme0 and Linux Mint on nvme1. I want Grub to load all three Windows versions in the same boot menu, plus Linux, and if possible, let each install select its own boot option automatically. Currently, I’m testing this on an empty SSD, but it doesn’t work smoothly. In my first setup I made a 140 GB partition for Win11 on a 500 GB drive and installed it fine. When I added another 140 GB for the second install, only the second one booted. While the boot menu lets me pick between Windows versions, the second one always restarts the system. The GUIDs match in bcdedit, but the behavior is inconsistent. My concerns: 1) How can I fix this without extra physical drives? Or should I use separate SSDs per installation? Hardware-wise it’s possible, but I’d rather keep all Windows on one drive. 2) ChatGPT suggests making a separate ESP partition for each Windows install and creating them manually after the first setup. Doesn’t sound right to me—does the standard really limit this? Is it prone to issues with updates or reliability?
You have several options: Access the Grub menu in Linux to start a Windows installation. Boot into another Windows version or run Linux using Grub. Combine one Windows setup with separate user accounts, keeping data isolated unless shared folders are used. Detailed steps can be found online.
Create a fresh BCD boot entry for every Windows install using BDCedit. Each installation replaces the old record, so prior versions won’t boot. After securing distinct BCD files, boot into Linux and use os-prober to verify all Windows instances appear. If they do, proceed with update-grub to add each version to the GRUB menu. If not, manually set up a grub chainloader configuration (grub-customizer for a GUI) to include every Windows variant in the boot sequence.