Linux – How to install Windows and linux on separate drives so that their booting is independent

There are ways to edit the boot manager/loader manually after the install. One is the official microsoft tool bcedit which is fully capable of that but not the most userfirendly program. There is also the 3rd party software easybcd which has a nice gui for the editing of the boot loader.

With both you can edit your boot loader so that it always directly boots into one system (which if i understand you correctly is what you want).

However please keep the following in mind. Windows booting is a two phase process, consisting of a boot loader and a boot manager. Those two do not have to be installed on the same hard drive (I think the loader has always to be on the primary hard disk while the manager is most of the time placed where the OS it was installed with resides). If you somehow managed to have the loader on another drive as the manager, you always have to keep this drive. If you remove it windows will not load anymore. I think with the tools I posted you should be able to get both the loader and the manager installed to where you want it to be and you should probably check that they are both on your windows 7 drive to avoid future complications.

The /dev/sda is your disk. /dev/sda[number] are partitions. One of them is Windows loader, one is your C/, another are D:/ and E:/. I don't know what is additional one. Which is which you must check by yourself.

I think you don't fully understand what do you should do, so there is simple instruction:

1. Delete E:/ (I think it's empty)
2. At the end of earned space (it should be end of disk space) make new partition with 200 MB of space, ext4 format and select /boot mount point. There will be installed GRUB.
3. Create next partition with freed space. It can be at begin or end space (). Partition must be 10 GB or more, but best way is 16-20 GB (IMO), select / mount point and ext4 format. This will be Linux system partition.
4. Create another one partition. Select ext4 and /home. There will be /home catalog and user files. Set it as big as you need for files you use on Linux. If you don't create it, /home will be at system partition, what is not good solution.

If you have some additional space, make there partition with ntfs format and without mount point for files you would to use form both systems. However in my opinion, better way is to copy data from D:/ somewhere, delete that partition and make bigger ntfs one for files with access form both systems. In this case / partition must be at the end of free space, just before /boot. Then you should have:

1. about 100 MB ntfs for Windows loader
2. 48 GB ntfs for Windows
3. ntfs partition for files accessible from both systems
4. ext4 partition for files accessible from Linux
5. 10-20 GB for Linux
6. 200 MB ext4 for GRUB In this order.

//Sorry for my English.