Alienware 15 v.s. multiple OS on different SSD

Hello, recently I bought my friend's Alienware 15. I changed it up so that:
1. 256gb M2 ssd -holds W10, operational
2. 128gb M2 ssd -holds Linux, Not accessible
3. 2TB SSHD -holds Data/shares things.

This set-up works very well on my toughbook, and lenovo laptops because the BIOS allows me to pick which SATA plug/Drive to boot from.

I've been trying for the past couple of hours looking for BIOS setting to actually allow me to access the individual drives at BOOT, with no avail. Could someone help me out here?

The way I get the systems to work happily is:
0. Linux drive is prioritized. I can also interrupt boot to boot directly from an OS.
1. GRUB on Linux manages boot with timeout, lets me choose which OS to boot from.
2. I mount shared partition from Linux/Windows, and everything works 100% well

As I said before, I am stuck on NOT being able to pick the Linus drive to boot from. Whence booted, it can very well be seen, the BIOS sees it, I just do not have the option to boot from it.

At boot, BIOS gives me options for:
1. Windows Boot Manager
2. Built-In IPV4
3. Built-In IPV6.

I tried to enable AHCI boot, this actually did not separate the NVMe/HDD selection, but even W10 failed to boot. So I went back to Intel boot management default setting.

I'm kind of lost. I've NEVER had to deal with a system where BIOS did not let me select which drive to boot from.

 

did u try F12 option, instead of going into BIOS.. also check ur SATA mode, whether if its AHCI OR RAID mode.. if its in RAID mode, u might need windows RAID preload driver a.k.a INTEL RST Drivers. last but not least, change secure boot off, and turn to legacy BIOS.. hope it gets detected..

 

The F12 Option, and BIOS setup are the ones that give me only these 3 options:
1. Windows Boot Manager
2. Built-In IPV4
3. Built-In IPV6.

I was able to enable AHCI after doing some reading, and changing a registry value in W10.

I did try Secure boot off, and Legacy on in BIOS.

The problem is that all of the drives DO get detected. There simply is no option to boot from a "drive". It enforces me to load a boot option from a specific drive with "Windows" Tag on, from where I can load boot.efi

I am looking into hacking the BIOS a little bit, and I want to keep it as a very very last resort.

 

these are the methods which worked for me a year ago, when i used ubuntu.. wait for coreboot

 

For an unexplained reason, now they are appearing with F12.

There's Legacy option of
1st HDD
2nd HDD
3rd HDD.

Is there a way to do a setup in BIOS, to set the 2nd HDD to boot from by default? That's where GRUB is loaded, that can manage the boot.

 

Nevermind, I figured it out.

I set the boot list/mode to Legacy and put the 2nd HDD as the priority.

 

Well, os-prober and grub seems to now fail to find the W10, W10 seems to only load on UEFI Mode on BOOT.

 

install windows 10 again.. i think that should do the job.. i dont know any way of chaning the boot priority in alienware bios. only method i know of is F12..

 

I have done this before on Windows 7. At the worst, I can do hard-dual boot, making BIOS as the OS selector, Since I am going to dedicate this laptop for Windows anyways, wouldn't be a HUGE issue,

but if someone knows how to change the W10 settings, please let me know.

 

Maybe @Vasudev i dont understand what your looking.. sorry.. lets wait for some more users to pour in suggestions

 

You need to Press F12 and select bootloaders if you're in EFI Secure boot. If you're on legacy you get a older boot menu asking which one to boot.
EDIT: Didn't see the OP.
Only way to install Linux and Windows 10 on multiple drives is to remove one drive whilst installing any OS. Example: If you're installing Linux remove the Win 10 ssd and installing Linux in single drive mode. Disable Secure boot if you want proprietary nvidia driver to work.

Code:

sudo mokutil --disable-validation

 

At this point, the question is not whether if I can boot from one drive or not, the question is why it's not being loaded by the GRUB and linux os-prober. It did at the fresh install, but not since then. I started a thread on my distribution forums for it.

At this time though, I know if I don't specify the Windows Boot Manager with UEFI, W10 will not boot.

 

Read above post.
@Papusan suggested this method.
I have a working Xubuntu 16 with kernel 4.13 with speedshift and power optimised/perf optimised based on AC source using TLP.

 

I am working with OpenSUSE LEAP 42.2 KDE.

The crazy part is that after the first fresh install, I did see the Windows Boot Manager for Windows 10, then after the reboot, gone. Secure boot is disabled, and Linux installation was done with only the SSD that holds it.

This is my thread at OpenSUSE forums.
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthr...-fails-to-recognize-W10?p=2845364#post2845364

 

Its a known issue when you multiple drives installed. Grub efi mistakes the bootloaders, so you need to remove the Windows disk and run grub update several times. Apply all updates and reboot. If everything works, I mean install proprietary GPUs drivers, only then put back Windows SSD.

 

That does ring the bell. I've had this issue on Lenovo and Toughbook for a while, but the difference there was was that I used Windows 7, and os-prober detected Windows 7 install. I am currently blaming the fact that the W10 is installed under EFI, not Legacy. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but if I choose to boot from the drive using legacy, W10 fails to boot.

 

Windows 10 works fine in legacy mode too if installed in EFI mode.
Start your linux distro from fresh state.