Hello there,
I'm a relatively new Linux user and I've been using Zorin Os Pro for a few months now. Last week I got to messing around with LVM a bit, for the purpose of combining 2 SSD's to function as a single secondary boot drive to try out other distros without having to format my main NVME drive each time(not a fan of partitions, i'd rather just have a dedicated drive).
What's in my pc:
*Main NVME drive that has Zorin 17 Pro on it
*2 SSDs (the 2 mentioned earlier)
*Misc storage HDD
As i'm a new user i figured using a guide to setting up LVM would be the best thing, so i used this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scMkYQxBtJ4 .
Long story short, my SSDs are now combined using LVM(and it works!), BUT my NVME drive which has Home and Root on it is now in the same LVM group. It's now a 3 in 1.
Obviously this is not exactly what I wanted sooo here are my actual question(s):
1: Is it possible to undo this? for example undo the group, and have just the 2 SSD's combined for dual booting?
2: Can I even use an LVM group of drives to install another distro, like Nobara, Mint? (yes I'm aware that's a bit late)
3: Would doing a fresh install of Zorin help in any way?
It's worth mentioning that i don't mind formatting the NVME and SSDs as long as I don't brick anything.
Thanks for reading and possibly responding.
Hi, welcome to Zorin OS!
First, since you are new to Linux, I would advise taking things slowly and don't overcomplicate things.
This is a bit counter-intuitive. Disk partitions are the way to segment the disk usage so that the data from one doesn't affect others. With LVM, you don't see the partitions, but they are still there.
If you want to be able to install other distributions freely without having to re-install your main OS, you should use partitions. You don't need LVM to do this, but you can add it on top in order to gain extra space. I understand this is what you've done so far?
Before going any further, can you post the output of these commands?
lsblk -p
pvdisplay
vgdisplay
lvdisplay
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Thank you for your response! Yes so far i've added the extra space from the SSD's ontop of the NVME Storage using LVM.
Mmmm, so it looks a bit messy... The problem is that you need to unmount the logical volume first which, being at the root of the file system (/), can be challenging.
Since you mention that everything is working for you, let's first discuss what is that you are trying to do.
If you want to install other distributions to test them out, I'd suggest using virtual machines. The performance won't be quite the same and there are other caveats, mostly regarding hardware compatibility, but this simplifies things quite a bit.
You can still combine the other two external drives using LVM to have that much additional space, and use that to store the virtual machines, for example.
If you prefer to set up dual boot, that's also an option. But, again, in the interest of simplifying things I would suggest using a regular partition on your NVMe drive. 500 GB is more than enough for two partitions, and you can still use your external storage for anything that's taking too much space.
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I see.. messy isn't good. I suppose i'm not the first person coming on to this forum with a question for help with a borked system 
I do apologize.
Having the two SSDs combined, or even just separate from the NVME at this point is something i'll happily take as an option. And running a VM is not a bad idea at all, altho dual boot still has my preference, partitioning is alright.
The system is functioning now but, mainly my worry is that if I really need to reinstall Zorin at some point, something is going to go sideways(even if i don't know that fear is justified or not), so getting the LVM group away from the NVME ''root drive'' would be the main focus.
Hey, at least it wasn't because you followed ChatGPT's instructions blindly 
All right, since you want to try dual boot that means you'll have to re-install Zorin OS on your NVMe drive anyway. This is good news, actually, as it'll solve all your problems with one stone.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I'd like to keep things simple and just use the default options during the installation, without any LVM nor encryption applied unless you have some actual reasons to use full disk encryption.
But if you do use full disk encryption, and you still want to setup a dual boot system, you'll have to create the partition table manually upfront, as otherwise you won't be able to resize it later on (well, not as easily).
With Zorin OS freshly installed in your NVMe, you can now format the other two drives. You can even follow the same steps as before to have them join in a single volume group; just make sure you only format the two drives, not the "primary" one.
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Gotcha, that's a real simple solution tbh! Reinstall, no LVM or encryption, and merge the ssds after.
Thanks a bunch for your assistance, I'll give this a spin and let you know how it turned out.
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Restarting things tends to work a lot more often than you'd expect. Or, in this case, reinstalling them.
It's not like using encryption is going to break things but it just makes things more difficult overall. And, it can lead to other problems, while in reality is only useful up to a point. Say, if you have a business and you don't want a stolen laptop to reveal customer data.
Feel free to ask come by if you need any more help!
