Pop_OS & Windows 10 but in two different drives: Where is the bootloader?

[Sylviarill]

Okay, so, this is actually a pretty stupid concern but let me explain.
Two weeks ago, I resurrected my old HDD to use it as a Linux boot drive. I choose to install Pop_OS' 22.04 LTS on it using the setup's reccomended option (meaning I didn't partition it myself, it did on his own, first time using Linux so I didn't want to mess up).
This same system has Windows 10 installed as well, just on a TOTALLY different drive, an SSD to be precise. Two other drives are also present, but are data only.

I didn't bother finding a bootloader here, I'm perfectly fine switching to Pop_OS through the BIOS, however, now I need to make a clean install of it again and my question is.. where is the bootloader/EFI partition now?

I checked both drives with diskpart and it looks like they have two different EFI partitions (which is what I actually wanted it to do, as said HDD might decide to die after 12 years of service), but I don't remember Pop_OS asking me where to put its bootloader. I tried checking some videos to see if it did to others but no one actually used their reccomended option, only the custom one (which I'd prefer to avoid if possible).

Does anyone know what happened here? Once again, I do want the drives to have two different bootloaders in order to not interfere between eachother, so it's not about having a dual boot within the same EFI partition, but making sure its EFI partition will not go to write into Windows' one.

[LloydLynx]

See if there's options in your BIOS to manually add an EFI boot entry to the list. I had to do that with Arch because it never told the BIOS to create one for it.

 

There's also a command line tool called efibootmgr that will try to create EFI boot entries from within the OS. And then there's also GUI tools on live USBs that are meant for repairing grub, which I think also means they can create EFI boot entries.

[Kilrah]

Usually if there is a drive present that already has an EFI partition it'll add its loader to it. So if you want everything independent you want to physically disconnect all drives other than the one you intend to install to during installation. That's valid for both Windows and Ubuntu variants. Even when you choose manual in Ubuntu installer and select the bootloader location it doesn't necessarily obey that choice.

[Sylviarill]

Point is mine are separate and individual someway? I haven't disconnected my Windows Drive when I installed Pop_OS, yet it did made an EFI partition in said drive anyway so I have zero idea what did actually happen.

Pop_OS does not use Grub, it has its own bootloader. I feel like it is switching between them but I'm not so sure at this point

[guitargirl15]

If there is an EFI partition on each drive, then you have two separate bootloaders, and two completely independent systems. If you don't want to have to switch boot drives from the BIOS, you can add Windows to your Pop_OS's boot manager, and put Pop_OS as higher boot priority in the BIOS. That way, if the Pop_OS drive is installed, your PC will boot to it, where you can choose to chainload Windows or boot to Pop_OS, and if you remove the drive, your PC will just boot straight to Windows.

 

[guitargirl15]

Wow nevermind I misunderstood the question. But if you want to be totally sure that you get a separate bootloader installed for Pop_OS then remove the Windows drive entirely when installing Pop_OS.

 

[RonnieTiger]

if your existing Pop_OS install is functional, you can sometimes look at the disk mount listing (mount in terminal) and see which one is attached to /boot (/dev/hda# / sda sdb etc.) and then check that against the drive assignment of your root parition or the one  you know which holds windows. that'd be my first call anyway.
 

Chances are with EUFI it installed it to the same drive and added 'Ubuntu' to the UEFI Boot options correctly, but i've seen cases where it also installed grub on the first boot device and not the one i wanted it to.