I currently have a Dell laptop that runs Windows for work. I use an external SSD via the Thunderbolt port to boot Linux allowing me to use the laptop as a personal device on a completely separate drive. All I have to do is F12 at boot, then select boot from USB drive.

However, this laptop is only using 1 of the 2 internal M.2 ports. Can I install Linux on a 2nd M.2 drive? I would want the laptop to normally boot Windows without a trace of the second option unless the drive is specified from the BIOS boot options.

Will this cause any issues with Windows? Will I be messing anything up? For the external drive setup, I installed Linux on a different computer, then transferred the SSD to the external drive. Can I do the same for the M.2 SSD – install Linux on my PC, then transfer that drive to the laptop?

Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

Edit: Thank you everyone! This was a great discussion with a lot of great and thoughtful responses. I really appreciate the replies and all the valuable information and opinions given here.

  • SavvyWolfEnglish
    5•4 months ago

    For anyone wondering about the security issues caused by this, even if the windows partition is encrypted, it’s still possible to get secrets from the Windows install.

    If you have root access to a Linux machine, you can easily replace the Windows kernel loader with one that looks just like Windows, but does nothing other than steal your encryption password on login/boot.

    Secure Boot/TPM would protect against this, but Linux users (especially those that are more lax about security) tend to disable it as part of installing Linux.