**someone edited the Title of this post; it’s wrong. there was already a “foreign” ssd installed.i’m talking about swapping SSDs location/slots on the motherboard"
Hello
i installed Manjaro on the better slot of the motherboard, and later on i installed Windows externally on a different PC and then inserted the SSD to my PC in order to avoid complications.
now sometime after, i realized that i transferred all of my Gaming/Steam to the Windows Drive and would like to put it where the Manjaro SSD is and vice versa.
should i expect any issues?should i do something before or after?
Though, if each OS is installed on a separate disk, then any difficulties should be minimal – this is usually the safest scenario.
While it’s difficult to predict absolutely how Windows (10/11?) will react, experience has shown that it’s likely to recover well enough after adjusting to the new system hardware, and a few reboots.
I might loosely suggest the following procedure:
1. Disconnect the Manjaro disk temporarily and connect the Windows disk to the desired port. Make sure Windows is functioning as it should be.
2. Re-connect the Manjaro disk to the other port - boot directly to BIOS and make sure the Manjaro disk is detected and that Manjaro’s UEFI/Grub is first in boot order.
3. Reboot.
All being well, you will boot to the Grub menu and see both Manjaro and Windows as available options – boot to Manjaro first, just to double check everything is still working (Linux is rather resilient, so I expect there will be no major issues).
My personal recommendation – Avoid sharing Steam games on a Windows NTFS files system, if possible; instead, move them to a native Linux file system. I understant this isn’t always convenient, or possible due to space constraints, but doing so can potentially help avoid complication later.
Some time ago I authored the following tutorial, which I link here not for you to follow now, but in case you might find any of the content useful for reference.
Regards.
Note that the topic title has been changed to be more search-friendly and better reflect what you wish to achieve.
What you can do is to log in on the old PC with a microsoft account.
That way the license will be tied to your account instead of the hardware. Windows usually allows 1-2 hardware changes, but in your case you change the whole PC, so it is quite possible it will require re-activation on the new PC. In that case you just login with the online microsoft account and voila.
@soundofthunder
i was more worried about Linux doing all kind of shenanigans
from experience i know that Windows usually boots wherever you insert the SSD,even if it comes from a different PC,
and honestly it’s not hard for me to reinstall and reconfigure,but on my Linux OS i have all kind of preferences and configurations i made along the years which i had to research and do in the Terminal,so it’s more complicated.
Regarding what you said about gaming, i don’t know what you mean by “Sharing”,but at first i was playing on Linux until i faced a road block in the form of an Anti-cheat,so i was going back and forth between those OSes until i decided to just use Windows for Gaming and move all my games there.
Yes, for Linux is the same pc. Maybe some devX numbering will change, but by default in all important places like grub or fstab the drives are referenced by uuid, so i cannot imagine any problem at all with the linux install.
What you wrote earlier wasn’t entirely clear. I suppose I filled in the gaps with a common scenario where some play their Steam games (in Linux) but from a directory on the Windows disk (or partition).
If you don’t do that; if you only play the games in Windows; then you can safely ignore my comments regarding Steam.
As Manjaro and Windows are already on completely separate disks (and already functioning well) most of those concerns are not related to your scenario.
The worst that might happen is if Windows somehow resets Secure Boot, in which case, boot to BIOS and make sure it’s disabled again. Otherwise, following the procedure in my previous post should help avoid most potential issues.
