Solved Dual boot on 2nd SSD on UEFI laptop

gnath · Sep 18, 2022

I am planning to install FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE on second SSD of Dell laptop. But I am scary to have some important pieces missing, hence I would like to clear few points. I read a lot of topics since few days but my understanding is not clear. Laptop came with Windows 11 preloaded on SSD. It has no CSM facility but F12 can choose device. So I added another SSD only for FBSD, which shows disk0 in windows. In past I have used legacy booting and no idea of UEFI.

So the points are before starting: The installer require ESP partition on second disk and then free space before hand or it will create the same and install the loader on that so that after choosing the 2nd SSD it will boot. And also installer will not mess with ESP partition of first disk.

bsduck · Sep 23, 2022

gnath said:
The installer require ESP partition on second disk and then free space before hand or it will create the same and install the loader on that so that after choosing the 2nd SSD it will boot

I don't understand your question well but just use automatic GPT/ZFS partitioning on the correct disk and you'll be fine, the disk will be bootable.

gnath said:
And also installer will not mess with ESP partition of first disk.

No problem, if you select the second disk as the disk to install FreeBSD on, it won't touch the other one.

gnath · Sep 25, 2022

bsduck said:
No problem, if you select the second disk as the disk to install FreeBSD on, it won't touch the other one.

Thanks for your confirmation which I was looking for. I have tried on second disk and it created an efi partition and a system partition. Unfortunately during copying system files it complain about checksum of the memstick. My downloaded xz and subsequent img files are ok ( new problem!! ). So far the auto UFS created 260MB of efi, system partition and swap of 3.6GB ( 8GB RAM ). The manual partitioning creates only 0.2TB for swap. I now assume that boot code will be created in this efi partition. I shall try with manual one. Another query is whether I have to disable TPM along with secure boot in UEFI.

gnath · Oct 9, 2022

I have installed on 2nd ssd without any problem. Only FBSD will not boot with secure boot on. TPM also has no issue. FBSD created own boot entry in BIOS . Only windows don't like to be second in boot sequence. It will be fine when FBSD find some way for secure boot.