Is it safer to install two OSes on different hard drives or just different partitions? [closed]
If I dual boot install both Ubuntu and Windows, is it safer to install them on two different hard drives than different partitions on the same hard drive?
What risks may be involved? For example, one OS does not recognize the files of another OS. One OS accidentally wipes out the other OS by some system operations?
Solution 1:
In general, they should leave each other alone. If you do the install correctly (Windows first, then Linux, as a rule, because Linux is more 'considerate'). As far as I am aware, there is no additional risk involved in sharing a drive.
Having said that, here are some gotchas to watch out for.
Windows will not be able to see the contents of your Linux drive or partition, unless you install additional software. ext4fsd works for me.
Shared storage partitions. If there is a partition which both OSes can see natively, meaning FAT32 or NTFS, then there can be issues with data loss. If Windows goes into hibernation, and another OS makes changes to the shared partition, Windows will tend to undo the changes when it is resumed. I recommend either external storage, or disabling hibernation on Windows, or both.
UEFI. This is new with Windows 8. There are two types of firmware interface, BIOS (older) and UEFI (newer). Both operating systems need to be installed using the same one. You can find a much more in-depth explanation here.
Solution 2:
It is safer to use 2 hard disks.
during formatting it is easier to recognize the different hard disks. 1 will be named sda and the other sdb. Though the installer puts names next to bootable partitions it does help to find other partitions that belong to that specific OS (like a D: drive will be sda2 on sda where sda1 is the OS for Windows or db2 is a partition for sdb where sdb1 is the root for Ubuntu).
hard drive failure. Does one drive fail you take it out and still boot into the other OS (maybe with the help of GRUB recovery).
I myself though would install the bootable partitions (ie. the operating system (C: and /)) on the fastest hard drive and put my data on the other drive.
But... backups and being able to restore them is more important. The best thing to do is make regular backups of your important data. If you do that you will only have minor problems.