So I have 2 disks, a 500GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. I have half of the SSD with Manjaro and half the HDD to mount as /home/ for that, and the other half of each disk for Mint and its /home/, which will get deleted and absorbed by Manjaro (maybe it’s a stupid dual setup but I was trying out Manjaro and I don’t put games and documents in the SSD)
The thing is that there are some apps and games I want to run on Windows 10, so I dug up a disposable HDD. I’m trying to find a way to install Windows in a partition on that HDD, but the installer gives me the classic “Can’t install on MBR, on EFI systems, Windows can only go in GPT disks” error, and I get stuck when installing GRUB to it.
I’m following these guides:
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/convert-disk-mbr-gpt-uefi
https://serverfault.com/questions/963178/how-do-i-convert-my-linux-disk-from-mbr-to-gpt-with-uefi/963179#963179
about a third of the way in, after running gdisk /dev/sda and creating a new partition, do grub-install on the disk. But I get an error that says
grub-install: warning: disk does not exist, using the reserve partition /dev/sdc4.
grub-install: warning: disk does not exist, using the reserve partition /dev/sdc4.
grub-install: warning: disk does not exist, using the reserve partition /dev/sdc4.
grub-install: error: grub-core/kern/disk.c:grub_disk_open:240:disk «hostdisk//dev/sdc4» not found.
The solutions I find online are for fixing GRUB when breaking your system and using rescue mode.
Now, disclaimer, /dev/sdc is the SSD, where I used to have Windows installed some time ago and still haven’t deleted that 512MB partition Windows always makes for some reason. I’ll paste the result of fdisk -l at the end.
What I want is a simple partition in a separate physical drive to put Windows into, while keeping my Linuxes intact and booting by default, instead of having to do that dumb “install Windows first, then make room for Linux” process. I’m running all of this from Manjaro. I don’t mind formatting the entire HDD if necessary. I hope this information is enough, if not please let me know.
Is this at all possible?
fdisk -l
Disco /dev/sda: 465,76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Modelo de disco: ST500DM002-1BD14
Unidades: sectores de 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Tamaño de sector (lógico/físico): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
Tamaño de E/S (mínimo/óptimo): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Tipo de etiqueta de disco: gpt
Identificador del disco: 4626E4B3-CF28-4316-B48D-0949137A36DC
Disposit. start end Sectores Tamaño Tipo
/dev/sda1 2048 976773119 976771072 465,8G Arranque de BIOS
Disco /dev/sdb: 1,82 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectores
Modelo de disco: ST2000DM006-2DM1
Unidades: sectores de 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Tamaño de sector (lógico/físico): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
Tamaño de E/S (mínimo/óptimo): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Tipo de etiqueta de disco: gpt
Identificador del disco: 9C08D420-A951-4187-AE45-ECD7B86E1915
Disposit. start end Sectores Tamaño Tipo
/dev/sdb1 2048 1953161215 1953159168 931,3G Linux Filesystem
/dev/sdb2 1953161216 3907028991 1953867776 931,7G Linux Filesystem
Disco /dev/sdc: 447,13 GiB, 480103981056 bytes, 937703088 sectores
Modelo de disco: WDC WDS480G2G0B-
Unidades: sectores de 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Tamaño de sector (lógico/físico): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Tamaño de E/S (mínimo/óptimo): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Tipo de etiqueta de disco: gpt
Identificador del disco: 01958B10-1B7F-47A2-BB7E-75541623A675
Disposit. start end Sectores Tamaño Tipo
/dev/sdc1 2048 4095 2048 1M Linux Filesystem
/dev/sdc2 456136704 937703054 481566351 229,6G Linux Filesystem
/dev/sdc3 1054720 456136703 455081984 217G Linux Filesystem
/dev/sdc4 4096 1054719 1050624 513M EFI system
