There are several reasons why one would want to dual boot his PC. Most times, we find ourselves in hoes where our hooves need to fit in and in that case we have to. Dual booting can become a stressful task especially when you have not made up your mind on what your requirements are. There are several alternatives to not dual booting like using a virtual machine. But when it comes to performance, you just don’t have any option than installing that second OS to utilize the full capacity of the hardware individually.
1. Partition your hard drive
A good example of dual booting your PC would be to partition your hard drive into two and install the second OS, lets say Linux on the other partition, that’s a good take. But what are the advantages and disadvantages this method present to us?
Advantages
One fair advantage would be that, you don’t have to worry about getting a second storage drive,
hings always remain in one place. Well, that’s fair enough if you might say but lets also consider another aspect of it.
Disadvantages
Let's be honest here, what if the entire drive crashes and you cannot save the other partition? Cases like this happen and all your data is wiped off, even when you partition the hard drive.
Sometimes, things could get messy installing a second OS like Linux on a partition after Windows has already been living on that storage drive.
Let’s be honest, Windows is a kind of selfish OS.
It assumes that it’s the only OS in the world when installed on a PC hence it takes over the BIOS when installed first on storage drive and if proper care is not taken may not boot again when you try installing a second OS on the same system hence Linux will always warn you when trying to install it as a second OS through the same system. There are precautions to avoid this too.
2. Install the second OS on a different drive.
This could be an external hard drive. Installing your OS on an external drive that uses a cable to attach to the storage mechanism isn’t a safe one to say, as the storage drive will never be stationary. Your storage drive could corrupt at a slight provocation, especially when that friend of yours comes around to tease you and mistakenly touches to connecting cable, hence unmounting the drive from the PC.
Another option one would prefer through the external storage approach in this case would be to obtain a flash drive which does not easily detach when slightly tempered with by an external agent. This is very secure as flash drives can be easily carried around without duress and even fit in your pocket hole. This means you’re carrying around an entire PC on your neck. Hurray!! This is a win win for penetration testers and system administrators who may want to get their work done anywhere they are without necessarily carrying around their system; like a plug and play OS.
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