#disk partitioning fuckups

[clatterbane]

This is what we want to see!

Operating in full Tired Chaotic Dumbass mode last night when I was trying to get the new external disk set up, what did I manage to do? Wipe out the boot partition on the WRONG DRIVE. Because of course I did.

So yeah, everything else on the drive was fine, but I couldn't boot into anything there.

After a little internal screaming and more than a little cursing myself, the best plan forward looked like getting the system up and running to boot off the new drive as I had intended, downloading a Windows 11 install ISO from there, and then hauling my stupid ass to bed for a brain reset.

But, this afternoon I did successfully get a working EFI partition and Windows bootloader back on the internal drive!

That does work the same on 11.

And, a very similar procedure if you didn't manage to fuck up the whole partition like I did, but just the Windows bootloader files:

But yeah, I did test and it's booting fine now.

In an enlarged partition too, since I decided to migrate my existing MX install over onto the new drive. Because yeah they make it easy to do that:

Thankfully I had already written the (gigantic) ISO and burned it to a USB before I accidentally wiped the boot partition. Was trying to get the new drive set up for it when that happened.

[clatterbane]

But yeah, now I do have two functioning bootable drives with at least somewhat saner partition layouts.

The original internal drive, running the stock Windows and also the new Garuda install I'm in now. I'm actually sending pretty much all the Linux-side games to the new external drive.

Which is more of a work in progress with how I actually want to use it. We've got that cloned MX Linux install (didn't even go for a separate /home partition this time), and the bigger partition which is basically just a miscellaneous data dumping ground at the moment. (Including my Steam library, and other chonkier games as mentioned, for the Linux side.)

Then there's that hunk of unallocated space that I'll decide what to do with whenever I need to. May enlarge the data hoard one a bit, and then make another dedicated partition for backups. I did consider adding a Windows-usable partition for similar chonky file purposes--but honestly I'm only using it where absolutely necessary, and it's already got around 300GB to itself now.

This is what we want to see!

Operating in full Tired Chaotic Dumbass mode last night when I was trying to get the new external disk set up, what did I manage to do? Wipe out the boot partition on the WRONG DRIVE. Because of course I did.

So yeah, everything else on the drive was fine, but I couldn't boot into anything there.

After a little internal screaming and more than a little cursing myself, the best plan forward looked like getting the system up and running to boot off the new drive as I had intended, downloading a Windows 11 install ISO from there, and then hauling my stupid ass to bed for a brain reset.

But, this afternoon I did successfully get a working EFI partition and Windows bootloader back on the internal drive!

That does work the same on 11.

And, a very similar procedure if you didn't manage to fuck up the whole partition like I did, but just the Windows bootloader files:

But yeah, I did test and it's booting fine now.

In an enlarged partition too, since I decided to migrate my existing MX install over onto the new drive. Because yeah they make it easy to do that:

Thankfully I had already written the (gigantic) ISO and burned it to a USB before I accidentally wiped the boot partition. Was trying to get the new drive set up for it when that happened.