Windows as Second Dual Boot

Question

I'm running Elementary OS Loki as my main OS on my full hard drive. Previously I had Windows 10 on the laptop.

I need Windows 10 for one or two apps that will not be stable in a Linux environment. (CAD software)

How do I go about putting Windows on a section of the disk without ruining my Elementary OS setup?

Thanks!

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---My Setup---

I have two disks, an ssd and hard drive. Loki is currently on the ssd. I am comfortable doing any of the following. I just don't know how.

1. Loki and Windows on the ssd together
2. Windows on the hard drive, with part of it partitioned for shared space

Answer 1

There isn't a really "safe" way to create a dual boot without impact on you current OS setup. So please, make a backup copy.

I recommend you to wipe your drivers and install Windows first, as elementaryOS installer knows how to play with a existing OS.

Or you may use a partition editor (like gparted) to shrink your elementaryOS partition to open space in your drive. Then, after Windows is installed with its own bootloader, you'll need to boot with a Linux "liveCD/USB" and reinstall GRUB.

My current setup on my single hdd laptop is three partitions:

1. elementaryOS (100GB)
2. Windows 10 (100GB)
3. A NTFS partition with my personal folders from Windows (~750 GB)

I find the third partition useful as (prior to Win10, actually) I often needed to reinstall Windows and used to try a lot of Linux distros.

Answer 2

If you have the two installs present already, you should be able to change the boot disk order in BIOS.

I put Elementary OS side-by-side with Windows 10 on a Dell Inspiron without too much trouble. Elementary usually works best as the first option, I think I had some problems with Windows as primary but they were relatively minor. I think it was the color on the Dell startup screen and it didn't really prompt me for Ubuntu or Elementary.