Are there any motherboards that support two M.2 boot drives?

[Snallygaster]

I'm planning my next build and I'm ready to pull the trigger on Linux. I've used it on my laptop for a couple years and close to a decade at work. Occasionally Windows will still be required for anti-cheat games or sometimes just the latest AAA games. I'd like to solve that problem with a completely separate boot drive. I have tried dual booting Windows and Linux off the same drive many times and it always ends up being a huge pain. Windows just does not like to play second fiddle. It also doesn't do well with updates. So if I keep both installs on completely separate hard drives and handle switching between them with the motherboard's UEFI, I figure that should give me the greatest isolation possible with an acceptable level of inconvenience.

 

The problem is that with the cheap motherboards I've worked with in the past, they don't support this. If two bootable drives are present, it only allows you to select one of them in the boot order settings. This may not be a problem on more premium boards, but I wouldn't know. I'd like both drives to be M.2 NVMe.

 

Are there any AM4 ATX motherboards that would support what I'm looking for? I'm willing to spend up to around $200, but I could go higher if that is the only solution. For reference, I currently have the MSI B550-A PRO in my build plan. I'm not attached to it at all.

 

Thank you!

 

[ET_Explorer]

22 minutes ago, Snallygaster said:

I'm planning my next build and I'm ready to pull the trigger on Linux. I've used it on my laptop for a couple years and close to a decade at work. Occasionally Windows will still be required for anti-cheat games or sometimes just the latest AAA games. I'd like to solve that problem with a completely separate boot drive. I have tried dual booting Windows and Linux off the same drive many times and it always ends up being a huge pain. Windows just does not like to play second fiddle. It also doesn't do well with updates. So if I keep both installs on completely separate hard drives and handle switching between them with the motherboard's UEFI, I figure that should give me the greatest isolation possible with an acceptable level of inconvenience.

 

The problem is that with the cheap motherboards I've worked with in the past, they don't support this. If two bootable drives are present, it only allows you to select one of them in the boot order settings. This may not be a problem on more premium boards, but I wouldn't know. I'd like both drives to be M.2 NVMe.

 

Are there any AM4 ATX motherboards that would support what I'm looking for? I'm willing to spend up to around $200, but I could go higher if that is the only solution. For reference, I currently have the MSI B550-A PRO in my build plan. I'm not attached to it at all.

 

Thank you!

 

Motherboard With 2 M.2 Drives

[Electronics Wizardy]

If your dual booting you can also have a bootloader like grub that will let you pick the os in the boot loader instead of the bios.

 

But I haven't seen a board that doesn't let you easily switch boot devices via the boot menu.

[Snallygaster]

18 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If your dual booting you can also have a bootloader like grub that will let you pick the os in the boot loader instead of the bios.

 

But I haven't seen a board that doesn't let you easily switch boot devices via the boot menu.

Every motherboard I've seen let's you choose which "class" of device to boot from. USB, CD, network, SSD. But I've never seen one say a specific device. Like I mentioned, if I have two SSDs plugged in, I've never seen a motherboard that lets me choose *which* SSD to use. 

 

Am I just crazy unlucky? I don't want to spend $130 on a board, install the CPU and drives and then find out I can't do this. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Snallygaster said:

Every motherboard I've seen let's you choose which "class" of device to boot from. USB, CD, network, SSD. But I've never seen one say a specific device. Like I mentioned, if I have two SSDs plugged in, I've never seen a motherboard that lets me choose *which* SSD to use. 

 

Am I just crazy unlucky? I don't want to spend $130 on a board, install the CPU and drives and then find out I can't do this. 

Most will let you pick the devices that you want to boot from within the class. So there is a hdd boot order.

 

Also with uefi this is a bit differnt, as you don't boot from a drive, but rather a efi file, so it likely won't show under class of drives.

 

Also there is a boot menu typically by pressing f12 or f8 or something else at bootup, and then selecting a specific device. This way you don't have to go into the bios to chagne the boot order.

[brob]

4 hours ago, Snallygaster said:

Every motherboard I've seen let's you choose which "class" of device to boot from. USB, CD, network, SSD. But I've never seen one say a specific device. Like I mentioned, if I have two SSDs plugged in, I've never seen a motherboard that lets me choose *which* SSD to use. 

 

Am I just crazy unlucky? I don't want to spend $130 on a board, install the CPU and drives and then find out I can't do this. 

 

You should be able to install Windows (first) on an NVMe drive. I wouldn't even install the second NVMe drive until after Windows is installed. Once Windows is installed install the second NVMe drive. Install the Linux distro on the second drive. Follow the dual boot instructions for that distro. Generally the installer will detect Windows and present installation options that should include dual boot. 

 

It's also possible to use the BIOS. But that method is cumbersome. One has to set the device boot priority. Then for device categories with more than one unit, e.g. drives, one has to set the unit priority within the category.