In my laptop I have 2 storage options, one of them is purely windows stuff and the other is just a storage drive, if I were to install fedora, wiping everything that is on the windows drive, does anything in the other drive get affected, I’d like to keep my files safe.
During the install you select the drive(s) to use. The installer does not touch any other drives that were not selected.
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And after the installation is done, I’ll be able to access my storage drive like normal, right?
I assume the storage drive is ntfs as is most windows devices.
Yes, you should be able to access it but be aware that since ntfs is not native to fedora there will be some differences. Normally not a problem though.
I worked in a “large enterprise” where Windows was the “corporate standard”, but in a group whose “mission critical” applications required linux or macOS. There were constant issues moving files between linux and Windows due to different rules for permitted filenames. permission problems, and character sets (some files had names assigned by various countries in their native language). If your files are valuable you should arrange to transfer them to a linux filesystem (e.g., by adding an internal drive if your system supports 2 drives or using an external USB drive) while you still have access to Windows. I’m not sure about Windows NTFS support in the Fedora Live USB. You should be able to use a WSL2 Linux in Windows to format an external drive with a linux filesystem and then copy your files while you are in a position to change filenames or permissions.
Is the storage drive encrypted with microsoft bitlocker?
If so you need to turn bitlocker off as linux cannot access bitlocker disks.
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You, of course, already have a backup of the contents of this other drive.
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