| Partition | Size | Filesystem | Type GUID / Flag | Role | |-----------|------|------------|------------------|------| | 1 | 1 MB | Unformatted | BIOS boot partition | GRUB stage1 (Legacy) | | 2 | 500 MB | FAT32 | EFI System (ESP) | rEFInd + GRUB2 EFI | | 3 | 64 GB | NTFS | Basic data | Windows install ISOs & wim | | 4 | 128 GB | ext4 (or Btrfs) | Linux data | Live Linux ISOs & persistence | | 5 | Remainder | exFAT | Shared data | Tools, logs, portable apps |
NTFS is recommended over FAT32 for partition 3 because FAT32 cannot store ISOs >4GB (e.g., Windows 10/11 64-bit). multiboot hdd 2021 final updated
While USB sticks are portable, using an external HDD or SSD offers several advantages: | Partition | Size | Filesystem | Type
Once everything is installed, the default BIOS menu usually looks messy. Install from your primary Linux distro. It automatically scans your drive and creates a beautiful, icon-based menu for every OS it finds. 💡 Pro Tips for 2021 It automatically scans your drive and creates a
Previous multiboot HDDs required manual loopback entries. The 2021 update adopts a without losing writeable partitions: