How do I dual boot Win7 and Mint17 both on /dev/sdb?

Question

Question: In my setup, where do I specify the device for the boot loader installation and how do I fix the issue of not being prompted to select my OS with GRUB?

Bonus Question: Is there an easy way to install linux to my /dev/sda and put windows 7 on my /dev/sdb/?

I had been using Linux as my primary OS, but needed some software that is Windows only, so I want to dual-boot. I have a laptop that has a small (60gb) ssd that is the /dev/sda/ drive.

It was originally used as cache drive for the larger hdd (/dev/sdb/), but when I switch to just Linux, I formatted the ssd and was using it as the OS drive. I would love to just have Linux installed on the ssd and windows on the separate hdd, but that sounds complicated. Anyway, here is what I am aiming for.

/dev/sda/
1 Partition (Windows System Partition) - NTFS - this gets installed by default when I install windows 7 first.
Free Space

/dev/sdb/
1 Partition - NTFS - Windows OS 
2 Partition - EXT4 - Mount /
3 Partition - Swap
4 Partition - EXT4 - Mount /home

Device for boot loader installation - /dev/sda (this causes me to boot directly into Linux Mint, no GRUB)

Device for boot loader installation - /dev/sdb (this causes me to boot directly into Windows 7, no GRUB or windows equivilant)

I really appreciate the help!

Answer 1

If this is your setup, all you need to do is boot into Linux and let it know you have a new OS installed. So, keep grub where it is, on /dev/sda, boot into your Linux system and run:

sudo update-grub

That will generate output similar to this:

Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.0.0-1-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.0.0-1-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-4-amd64
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sdb1
done

Make sure your Windows system is detected. If it is, that command just updated your grub configuration file and next time you reboot you will be presented with the grub menu, complete with an option to boot Windows.