Hi,

 

Is it possible to add to the unraid boot menu the windows 10 boot partition?

I have a disk dedicated to windows 10, already installed, so not part of the unraid array/cache.

 

I want to boot from the unraid flash, but then to select from the menu the option for windows 10 disk.

Currently i have to use the F8 key (in case of Asus) to select the device to boot, and will chose to boot either the flash, or the win 10 disk.

 

I already saw the instructions to use the cache drive to host multiple partitions (cache, windows partition) but is not for my scenario.

 

-d

 

Edit: after more reading, i understand it could be possible... by modifying the syslinux config to add extra menu for windows 10 partition.

Is there any good guide, instructions already available? i could not find yet...

thanks

What you are trying to do is not recommended at all. If windows takes a notion to change any bits on the unraid drive for any reason, you will lose the ability to accurately reconstruct a failed drive in the unraid array until you successfully complete a correcting parity check.

 

Unraid expects to be the only boot OS on the machine. Any other configuration is unsupported.

i just edited my post.

 

jonathanm

you refer to the flash drive? i assume windows will not touch the flash drive, but i might be wrong...

 

 

but if you refer to the array disks - the unraid array/cache will not be visible from windows.

windows will use a disk, outside unraid.

unraid array will have separate disks.

-d

 

Did you even find a solution for this?  I also would like an Unraid bootmenu option to boot baremetal Win10 from an SSD mounted outside the array.  This avoids the delete key dance and boot drive reassignment via BIOS.  Basically a menu option that allows booting from sda for Unraid via the Flash drive or Win10 via sdj.

8 minutes ago, pasgener said:

Did you even find a solution for this?  I also would like an Unraid bootmenu option to boot baremetal Win10 from an SSD mounted outside the array.  This avoids the delete key dance and boot drive reassignment via BIOS.  Basically a menu option that allows booting from sda for Unraid via the Flash drive or Win10 via sdj.

Basically what the post 2 above yours states.  If Windows touches the unRaid drives at all, you've basically trashed parity.

I understand completely, and have no plans to touch the array disks (or flash drive) from "inside" Win10.  However for system maintenance, bios updates, etc. it is far easier to perform from a bare metal Win10 environment -- at least for me!  99% of the time Unraid will be running on the system, but on those rare occasions that I need Win10 baremetal, a menu option would avoid the delete key/Bios dance.

I don't think what you are asking for is possible.  The Unraid boot menu is syslinux - you can go research if booting windows via syslinux is possible but I don't think so.  Why do you need 'baremetal'?

I understand what is being said here and why it can be useful.  Sometimes you've got to do bios updates etc and it needs a Windows 10 install to do it.  I accidentally discovered I could do this when my Motherboard decided to boot off my 'passed through' Windows 10 disk, usually used in an unraid VM.  I actually needed to do this to get my Perc 310 card flashed to IT mode as I had no other computer that would take a PCI card and couldn't do it under linux / DOS.  Who uses DOS now anyway?

 

I can't really see how Windows would touch any array drives unless someone was stupid, it doesn't have XFS support and will warn you if you try to access one of them.

 

Anyhoo, while I have done many multi-boot systems, I don't recall one with Syslinux.  I think you can put grub over the top though - or more accurately, Syslinux underneath, but how to actually do that with Unraid while keeping it all hunky dory, with an image based install is the question.

 

I believe that grub handles UEFI better than Syslinux so perhaps limetech will look at that someday as UEFI is fairly widespread now and my quick googling indicates others are commenting on limitations in this area of Syslinux.  But that really was a quick search so don't take that as Gospel.  It seems the fix would be grub in one capacity or another.  Either Limetech shifting to it, or you finding a way to send it to the USB with the right partition setup.  Sounds like fun!