What I would like is to have Ubuntu installed on my 60GB SSD and Windows 7 installed on my 1TB HDD in a 100GB partition, leaving the remaining 900GB as a NTFS data partition that I could access from Ubuntu or Windows.
My PC boots in UEFI mode, which seems to throw a wrench in most of the currently available guides for setting up a dual boot situation with Windows and Ubuntu.
My first attempt at this was to install Windows first. I pointed the installation at the second hard drive and let it go. Everything went fine, and I could boot into Windows just like you would expect. When I booted into the Ubuntu live CD, Windows was detected, and I chose the option where you can look at the current partitions and set them up how you would like for the Ubuntu installation. I discovered here that Windows had put a 100MB partition on the SSD, which is the "system reserved" boot partition, and the actual Windows OS on the HDD. I was hopeful that the Ubuntu installer would be smart enough to deal with this, and went ahead and installed Ubuntu the SSD. The installation completed successfully, but I couldn't boot into Ubuntu, no matter what options I played with in the boot settings.
I tried this process again, this time disconnecting the SSD before booting the Windows installation DVD. This left the SSD untouched, but I still couldn't boot into Ubuntu after a clean installation to it.
Having Ubuntu running properly is my first priority, so I opted to get it installed and running first, which is where I am now.
The 60GB SSD currently holds a booting, working Ubuntu 12.04 installation. In GParted, it is /dev/sda, and its partitions look like this:
Partition File System Mount Point Size
/dev/sda1 fat32 /boot/efi 100MB
/dev/sda2 ext4 / 48GB
/dev/sda3 linux-swap 8GB
I haven't really touched the 1TB HDD (/dev/sdb), so it looks like this:
Partition File System Size
/dev/sdb1 ntfs 932GB
My concern is if I now try to install Windows to the HDD, will it overwrite something on the SSD which will orphan my Ubuntu installation? If so, is that something that boot-repair or some other tool/process can resolve?
If I disconnect the SSD and install Windows to the HDD, will the SSD still be recognized as a bootable device when I reconnect it? I really don't understand how UEFI works, and I don't know if disconnecting and reconnecting drives is safe.
What is the safest way to proceed given my current setup?
Update: rschuler provided a couple of good options, but I would like to be confident that I am not going to lose my current Ubuntu installation when I install Windows. I'm putting up a bounty to see what else is out there.
Best Answer
I don't have a UEFI machine but what seemed to always work for me was removing the hard drives that I didn't want the installation to write to during the install of the OS. In your case, I would remove the SSD and have Windows install to the 1TB drive. The 100MB system reserved partition will be on the HDD instead.
To dual boot, replace the SSD, set it to be the active drive then setup your grub files accordingly.