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August 6th, 2025 17:04
m18 R1, only 1 SSD showing in BIOS?
Hey, all. I have an M18 R1 and I run Linux, but I am required to have an actual Windows installation (i.e. no emulation) for certain things. I have a two SSD's installed on my system and ideally want to install Windows on the second SSD. However, I only see one SSD available in BIOS (although once my system boots both drives are available).
I saw somewhere that there was a way in BIOS to change which drive is the boot drive, but I cannot find that option anywhere.
Does anyone either know where that option is or how to choose the second SSD as my boot drive? Or is this even possible in Dell's BIOS?
Thanks.
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ejn63
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August 6th, 2025 18:05
That's generally why you want to install Windows first (or remove the Linux drive completely to do so) and then install a boot manager under Linux. Bear in mind that Dell does not support Linux at all on this system, and it's not designed to allow selection of the boot drive in firmware.
ejn63
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August 6th, 2025 17:56
You'll need a boot manager (grub, lilo, etc.) to manage booting the drives. It's not possible from the firmware setup.
jokerfmj
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August 6th, 2025 18:02
@ejn63 I understand what you mean, but that isn't quite the question I have, perhaps I just stated it poorly.
I need to be able to set a particular drive, in this case I'll call it SSD2, as the main boot drive so that I can install Windows on it through the USB installation utility. Because Windows does so many reboots throughout the installation process, if SSD1 is the primary drive and I have selected SSD2 as the installation partition, the installation fails.
I can set various drives as the primary boot drive in BIOS (e.g. SB, CD-ROM, SSD1), but it only shows SSD1 available, it does not show the SSD2 from the second slot. This is what I was trying to select in BIOS.
(edited)
jokerfmj
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August 6th, 2025 18:15
@ejn63 Yeah, I had a dual boot setup previously, but then Windows blue-screened itself with a mandatory/automatic update, so I nuked that partition and just ran with my Linux install at that point. I was unable to repair/reinstall Windows on that previous partition because of the issue I mentioned above with the reboots during the installation process.
It isn't a huge deal to install Windows over my Linux install, but if weren't for this one mandatory case I require the actual installation of it for I wouldn't use it at all at this point. I am also not concerned about Dell's support as it has proven to be sorely lacking as I experienced significant issues with this system where the screen would just go black and the only recourse was to reboot. After multiple calls lasting over an hour and multiple trips out by a technician, the issue was never resolved. It is worth noting the issue never happened in Linux.
The limitation of not being able to select a boot drive in BIOS is incredibly frustrating; this option has been in BIOS for decades.
Thank you for your input.