Yes, you can place an OS installer on your main storage device.
Yes, you can place an OS installer on your main storage device.
We usually place the OS installer on a USB stick and let the BIOS start it there. I noticed a better option would be to put the installer on a dedicated permanent drive (such as an SSD or HDD) and boot into it, which would speed up the setup but needs an extra drive I don’t have. Since I only have one drive with Windows installed, can I still dual boot Debian onto my main drive while the BIOS boots from it? In the BIOS menu, I see storage devices but not partitions I can boot from.
I’m not familiar with any method that would make this easier. Installing directly on the target drive might be quicker, but using a USB stick with the installer is far more practical. I store a Ventoy USB containing all my OS installers on it, allowing me to download and install nearly any software except macOS from a single device.