I currently have a Dell laptop that runs Windows for work. I use an external SSD via the Thunderbolt port to boot Linux allowing me to use the laptop as a personal device on a completely separate drive. All I have to do is F12 at boot, then select boot from USB drive.

However, this laptop is only using 1 of the 2 internal M.2 ports. Can I install Linux on a 2nd M.2 drive? I would want the laptop to normally boot Windows without a trace of the second option unless the drive is specified from the BIOS boot options.

Will this cause any issues with Windows? Will I be messing anything up? For the external drive setup, I installed Linux on a different computer, then transferred the SSD to the external drive. Can I do the same for the M.2 SSD – install Linux on my PC, then transfer that drive to the laptop?

Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

Edit: Thank you everyone! This was a great discussion with a lot of great and thoughtful responses. I really appreciate the replies and all the valuable information and opinions given here.

  • Karna
    7·
    4 months ago

    In most cases, work laptops have software(s) installed to automatically keep track of these activities, and flag it to security team of your organization. At that point, it will either lead to a formal warning to you, or termination/forced resignation.

    From organization point of view, this is to avoid any accidental (or intentional) leak of confidential data, and/or accidentally (or intentionally) infecting your (work) system with malware/ransomware.

    The latter had happened in one of my previous organizations, and the person responsible was terminated from job immediately.