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I would like to dual boot Windows 10 with Ubuntu and have each on separate drives. Simple right? Well, the problem is that I already have Windows 10 and Ubuntu dual booted onto a single drive. Ideally I would like to move Ubuntu to the second drive rather than doing a clean install since I have a lot of important programs installed on there that would be a pain to do again. What is the safest way for me to do this?

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  • Clean install is still the easiest. If you have reasonable speed Internet, you can export list of installed apps & reinstall. If from ppa, you you have to add those separately. Is system UEFI (gpt) or BIOS (MBR). If gpt you cannot easily copy partition image as GUID in partition table & backup partition table must match. You can just copy all files and reinstall grub, reset UUID and some other settings. You do have backups? And a clean install would be a good test that your backup proceure works.
    – oldfred
    Mar 24, 2017 at 18:12
  • A comment about the clean-install route: You can copy your home directory from the original to the new installation pretty easily; just be sure that both installations exist simultaneously long enough to do this.
    – Rod Smith
    Mar 24, 2017 at 18:14

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I'm tempted to mark this as a duplicate, since it's asking basically the same question that's answered here:

Moving entire Linux installation to another drive

There are one or two deviations of this question from the one I've referenced, though:

  • The referenced question is for a Linux-only installation, whereas in your case you've got both Windows and Linux. That shouldn't really affect anything, though, with the possible exception of the EFI System Partition (ESP), which is normally shared between OSes. You can either leave Ubuntu's GRUB on the original disk's ESP or move it to a new Ubuntu-only ESP on the second disk. Either approach will work, but the latter approach will make the installation more self-contained -- you'll be able to physically move the Ubuntu disk to another computer and boot it there (although you'll need to jump through some hoops because of the way EFI-mode booting works). OTOH, leaving GRUB where it is will likely be a little less hassle.
  • The referenced question involves a BIOS-mode boot. It's unclear whether you're booting in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode or in EFI/UEFI mode, but if the Windows installation is from the factory, it's probably in EFI mode. (See this page of mine to determine your boot mode.) Assuming an EFI-mode boot, if you move GRUB to the new disk, you'll need to adjust the EFI's boot manager to point to its new location. You can do this with efibootmgr or by re-installing GRUB with the help of Boot Repair. Whether it's a BIOS-mode or an EFI-mode installation, chances are you'll need to adjust the GRUB configuration to get it to point to the new location. Boot Repair should be able to do this. Alternatively, if it's an EFI-based system, you could use my rEFInd boot manager on USB flash drive or CD-R to boot after you've transferred the system and updated its /etc/fstab file, then install either GRUB or rEFInd manually.

In any event, there are a lot of different ways to do this. They're all similar in broad outline, but some details differ. The biggest challenge is likely to be dealing with the boot loader (GRUB by default), which can be picky and create problems if it's not reconfigured appropriately.

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