This was solved!!
Don’t know where to draw the line and say this is either a Windows post or a Linux post, but I’d rather post here because this community is more active.
To make the story short, I’m new to Linux and trying to make a jump to it in the future, but for now I decided to dual boot with W11 on my other drive until I understand what I’m doing.
Anyways, before I did a clean install of Win11, I had 2 SSDs like this:
- Disk0 - Windows installed
- Disk1 - Fedora installed
I wanted to clean my system and start over, and also wanted to try Endevour OS so I could later try Arch, but after doing a W11 clean install, my SSDs look different (see picture posted)
Now, I feel like my question is really basic. I specifically checked that W11 needed to only install on Disk0, so I don’t know why Disk1 has some partitions:
If I remove/format Disk1, will I lose the whole OS and prompt me to install Windows again? Or should I just install it again regardless so I can install Linux (EOS) on the other drive?
Sorry if this is not a Linux question specifically, sorry if it’s a stupid question and thank you in advance for any responses!
Did you remove Fedora before you started? If not then you're seeing the Fedora partitions. One would be a boot sector (EFI), the other a swap partition, and the big one your main partition.
If you did remove Fedora and reformat that disk, then Windows possibly used all available hardware. Boot Windows and see if there's a second HDD available. If so, the easiest way to fix it is to run the install again and pick where it is installed, rather than just letting it do its own thing. I say it's easier, because it looks like it put the boot sector on the second HDD and created a swap file partition. That's my guess anyways.
I advise you to install a separate boot sector for each OS on its own HDD. If you try to use one drive then Windows occasionally fubars the Linux boot sector. Then just use boot options to choose which you want to boot into at post.