Hello, I need to install Qubes OS in a “Dual Boot” or data coexistence environment. I currently have a 1.8 TB physical disk divided into two partitions under Windows: drive E: (1 TB with critical files) and drive F: (250 GB empty, intended for Qubes OS).
My goal is to install Qubes exclusively in the space on partition F without compromising the partition table or the data on drive E. Since the official documentation focuses on using entire disks, I have the following questions:
How should I configure the “Installation Destination” so that it recognizes only the free space?
Is it necessary to leave drive F as “Unallocated Space” before starting the installation?
How does Qubes handle LUKS encryption and LVM Thin Provisioning when working on a partition and not on the entire disk?
At the end of the day, I want to install Qubes on the space I partitioned on the other disk without deleting all my data. …
I looked into this a while back, ‘what is your threat model’ and ‘why are you installing Qubes’ are going to be important considerations here
Duel-booting Qubes is very much not recommended, as any program inside the secondary OS (Windows, in your case) gets greater access to the dom0 disk space than should be permitted under the Qubes threat model. The duel-boot setup effectively undermines the security model that makes Qubes worthwhile to use. Here and here are some pretty relevant threads
It’d be much better to back up your windows data, install Qubes over the entire disk, and set up a windows Qube under the hypervisor’s supervision
You could do it in installer - there is advanced partitioning tool. But it’s so not intuitional and with no usable description that more possible is that you lose your precious data.
You can go into custom storage configuration, select automatic configuration, review, modify and accept it.
Pretty sure you will only have one option to select from with one physical drive, partitions should be visible in custom configuration, not on the first device selection screen.
No, you can reformat and repartition everything the way you like in the installer.
Default configuration partitions free space on a drive into a small unencrypted parition for /boot/ and a large encrypted partition for everything else. If you are going to tell it to use an existing partition, it will be up to you to decide what the partition is going to be used for.
You can run Qubes from a disk slice ie “a partition” on a disk that is next to other disk slices that have other things, provided you are an advanced user. If you are not already equipped to do this entirely on your own (without reaching out to the forum for assistance) you should not try to do this.
Your best option is to run Qubes on its own dedicated disk. If you are serious about your security then do not run any other operating systems on that same machine.
Qubes release 4.3 has tools for running Windows in a qube. If you are so unfortunate you experience some “need” for Windows you are best off running that in a qube. If you have a “gaming” issue then you should dedicated another computer solely to that and firewall it off from any other subnet/network.
“Dual booting” Qubes OS is something that the advanced Qubes users who could assist you with it do not themselves ever consider to do and do not do. “Dual booting” Qubes OS is not supportable. At best you could pay someone (someone with questionable ethics) to engage in that kind of behavior.