[SOLVED] Switching to secondary SSD which has arch installed | Arch Linux Community | Page 1

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 12:52 PM

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Hi, I use a laptop which had arch installed on it but I want Windows as well cuz certain applications didn't support linux so I decided I'd instal l the two OSes on two separate drives. I am not much of a hardware person, so I gave my laptop to a shop and he put in a new SSD and installed Windows 10 on it for me. Now, starting my laptop boots to Windows. I thought I'd be able to switch to the drive with linux on it by changing the boot order, but the boot order only shows the windows' os manager, cd/dvd, usb, etc, the old SSD doesn't show up.

Is there any way I could switch to the secondary drive with arch on it? I don't mind doing a fresh install too since I don't have any data on the secondary drive.

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Also, I had forgotten to enable os-prober in the grub config before installing the new SSD but I am not sure that's relevant since I am unable to access grub anyway.

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 1:41 PM

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sleek ether Also, I had forgotten to enable os-prober in the grub config before installing t...

Boot into the Arch USB and inspect your Arch's EFI partition contents

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It doesn't seem like Windows has its own EFI partition, did it somehow use the Linux one? If so, it probably wiped it or something and you need to recreate the contents, or make a separate one

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Also - I don't know about you, but on my motherboard, "EFI bootloader entires" are separate from the list of devices you can boot from

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:29 PM

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bitter vigil It doesn't seem like Windows has its own EFI partition, did it somehow use the L...

you were kind right, it looks like windows did use linux's partition but it didn't wipe it - which is arguably worse (i think) 😭

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also sorry for the late reply, i was looking for my usb

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how do i fix this now?

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:31 PM

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Do you want to continue using the same EFI partition for both windows and archlinux ?

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Also, don't use /boot/efi - it's deprecated

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Use /boot instead

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:32 PM

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bitter vigil Do you want to continue using the same EFI partition for both <:windows:73581579...

nope, windows will keep messing with linux if i do

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:32 PM

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bitter vigil Also, don't use /boot/efi - it's deprecated

thanks, i was wondering about that cuz it looked like arch had created an EFI directory automatically

austere irisBOT Aug 4, 2025, 4:32 PM

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Miałkotnik :3 received a thank you cookie!

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:34 PM

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cd /mnt/boot/efi && rm -rf *.img grub EFI/GRUB EFI/arch EFI/grub-install vmlinuz*

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umount -R /mnt/boot/efi

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and do lsblk -f

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:36 PM

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bitter vigil ```sh cd /mnt/boot/efi && rm -rf *.img grub EFI/GRUB EFI/arch EFI/grub-install v...

is it okay to use -f while removing here cuz the last time i did that, it broke arch and wiped everything

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:36 PM

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-f is the force flag, you can not use if if you don't want to, but rm might complain

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if you did rm -rf and it wiped everything, you must've done something wrong

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we're just removing all the linux boot files on your current EFI partition here

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and actually it's optional since you probably want another EFI partition for that anyway

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:38 PM

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bitter vigil and do `lsblk -f`

i also want to see the output of this because it seems like you have a few potential candidates for a new EFI partition so you can avoid shrinking your root partition entirely

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:39 PM

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bitter vigil if you did `rm -rf` and it wiped everything, you must've done something wrong

i never figured out what went wrong exactly, it was out of nowhere

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#1400102977284603906 message

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made a thread bout it here too

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:40 PM

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well it looks like you weren't cautious enough and the timeshift thingy actually pointed to your current linux installation

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:41 PM

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ran the command without the force flag and it looks like it worked fine

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bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:41 PM

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good

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:41 PM

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i'll unmount it

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:42 PM

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from your windows screenshot i saw 512 MB of unallocated space on your linux disk

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does it show up when running cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1?

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:42 PM

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bitter vigil well it looks like you weren't cautious enough and the timeshift thingy actually...

maybe there was a soft link, yeah

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:42 PM

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do you want to use it as your new EFI?

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also - moving the EFI partition to your windows disk would probably require reinstalling windows

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:43 PM

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bitter vigil does it show up when running `cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1`?

oh yea, it does

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:44 PM

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bitter vigil do you want to use it as your new EFI?

sounds good, i don't want to bother resizing and creating anothe partition

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:44 PM

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okay

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:44 PM

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bitter vigil also - moving the EFI partition to your windows disk would probably require rein...

nope, don't wanna do that then

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:45 PM

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okay

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just keep in mind that windows might break when you ever swap disks or something

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it's windows so you never know

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so now create the new partition

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:46 PM

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bitter vigil just keep in mind that windows might break when you ever swap disks or something

like physically? i'll likely never do that

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but yea i am aware windows is a bit of a bitch

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:47 PM

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bitter vigil so now create the new partition

done and the type is EFI System iirc?

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:47 PM

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yes

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format it as FAT32

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:49 PM

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yep, done

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:56 PM

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do you know what to do next

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:57 PM

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mount everything and then generate fstab?

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 4:57 PM

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yes

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make sure to overwrite it

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and mount it as /mnt/boot

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 4:59 PM

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just to make sure, i don't need to format the home partition again, right?

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i'd assume that will wipe the existing data/packages

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:07 PM

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sleek ether just to make sure, i don't need to format the home partition again, right?

no

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no need for that

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you don't format anything except the /boot partition you just created anyway

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:20 PM

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bitter vigil you don't format anything except the /boot partition you just created anyway

yea, got it

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sorry to bother you again but i couldn't enable network manager while in chroot

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:21 PM

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sleek ether sorry to bother you again but i couldn't enable network manager while in chroot

why?

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:21 PM

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do i need to re-install any packages?

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:22 PM

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bitter vigil why?

no idea, the command doesn't return anything

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:23 PM

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sleek ether no idea, the command doesn't return anything

show me

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:23 PM

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bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:24 PM

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well

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that usually means it succeded

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also i don't see why you needed to re-enable it

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:26 PM

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bitter vigil also i don't see why you needed to re-enable it

i was just going through the arch installation wiki and thought this was something that neede to be done before i unmounted everything and rebooted it

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:27 PM

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did you remember to reinstall the kernel, microcode, grub, (possibly) regenerate initramfs and regenerate grub's config?

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:29 PM

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bitter vigil did you remember to reinstall the kernel, microcode, grub, (possibly) regenerate...

i didn't

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for a stupid reason now that i thibk about it

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:45 PM

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bitter vigil did you remember to reinstall the kernel, microcode, grub, (possibly) regenerate...

reinstalled the base packages but it still throws the same error

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:46 PM

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you are trying to enable NetworkManager in your USB which doesn't make any sense

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:47 PM

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bitter vigil you are trying to enable NetworkManager in your USB which doesn't make any sense

oh shit, my bad

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but the command doesn't return anything when i do in chroot, either

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should i assume that it worked cuz chroot is ignoring the status command

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 5:48 PM

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sleek ether but the command doesn't return anything when i do in chroot, either

i would be more concerned if it did return something

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i don't think it'll give you a confirmation like "created symlink blah blah service blah blah"

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because i assume you already had it enabled

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and for some reason you're doing it again

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 5:49 PM

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bitter vigil i would be more concerned if it *did* return something

oh- right, i'll keep that in mind

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makes sense, i just didn't think it would still be enabled after messing with the partitions and everything

bitter vigil Aug 4, 2025, 6:06 PM

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sleek ether makes sense, i just didn't think it would still be enabled after messing with th...

you didn't mess with your root partition though

sleek ether Aug 4, 2025, 6:34 PM

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bitter vigil you didn't mess with your root partition though

yea, i realize that now

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anywho, i configured grub and arch is now back up and running again. thanks for all your help and answering my questions, really appreciate it! @bitter vigil

austere irisBOT Aug 4, 2025, 6:35 PM

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Miałkotnik :3 received a thank you cookie!

#[SOLVED] Switching to secondary SSD which has arch installed