Hello everyone and the best of New Years 2019.
My current system I built in 2011 is on it's last legs (mobo caps starting to fail) and I will be building a new system this year. Because I am transitioning as a 30 year DOS/Windows user to Linux, my new system will be primarily a Linux Mint machine with an install of Windows 10 to maybe run one or two programs that I have yet to find a Linux replacement for, plus an experimental SSD (1 TB) to install and try other distros while keeping Mint as my primary system. So what I "think" I will do is install the following hardware:
1. An NVME SSD (probably 1 TB) as the primary Linux (root), boot, and Home drive (not to mention the install drive for BIU)
2. A SATA SSD to hold the Win10 OS and some of the few programs I may install to it
3. Another SATA SSD (again, probably 1 TB) to load multiple distros of Linux for testing purposes
4. At least one (maybe two) 4-6 TB old style disk drives just to hold some of my old photos, videos, and of course multi-OS backups (will be using external USB Gen2 storage for backups as well)
So, I have a few things I'd like some guidance on. Before that, I'd just like to say that I've been using David's (er, Terabyte's) BootIt products since about 1998 so am pretty familiar with at least BootIt and Image, but now it seems I need to move on to BootIt UEFI for the new build, correct?
Anyway, what's the best way to go about this? After the build, should I install BIU first to my primary NVME SSD, then go ahead with the Linux Mint install (yes, I know about preparing the HD or SSD beforehand for a Linux install and creating the partitions ahead of time)? After that, my next install would be Windows 10 to it's own dedicated SSD.
Later, I would over time be installing various Linux distros to their own dedicated 1TB SSD. Here's where I'm not sure what to do. After preparing the SSD for that particular Linux install, how do I handle the /boot partition and Grub2 install? That is, if my initial Linux Mint install is done with 4 partitions (/boot for boot files, / for root meaning OS, /Home for my home directory, and /swap for the swap file), how do I share at least the /boot Grub2 boot partition with all my other Linux distros? Can they all share/occupy the original Mint /boot partition, or do I need to set up a /boot partition for each distro install on the separate dedicated SSD for Linux distro testing?
Sorry for the long post but hope my question(s) were clear. I look forward to any advice you all my have to offer. Thank you!