Dual boot Windows 10 and Linux Mint on 2 separate drives

Hi guys

Some questions please, i have recently installed Linux Mint 18.2 on my Windows 10 PC.
Windows 10 is installed on my 500GB SSD.
Linux Mint has been installed on a separate 120GB SSD, connected to a sata port.
Its all working great, and i can dual boot, choosing at start up from the grub menu, i have it set as Windows boot manager priority with 10 seconds, so if i don't select Linux Mint before the 10 seconds it boots straight to Windows.

The question i have, is, on my Linux Mint, i have 3 partitions, 2 of them EXT4, and 1 is Swap.
Although the install was done on the 120GB SSD, i have a Ubuntu folder under EFI, in the 99mb Windows 10 system partition.
Is this normal?
I wanted Linux to be completely independant from Windows 10.
In this situation, i think if i remove the Windows 10 drive, Linux will not boot.

Thanks in advance

My guess is that Linux did put it's boot files on the Windows SSD. Restart your computer and there should be a key to press to bring up the UEFI boot menu, probably F11 but it varies between computers. Then select the Linux SSD to boot from and see if it goes.

Or, just unplug the power or data cable from the Windows SSD and see if the computer will boot form the Linux SSD with only it connected. If the Linux SSD does not have a FAT32 partition on it, then I don't think it will boot by itself.

NavyLCDR said:

My guess is that Linux did put it's boot files on the Windows SSD. Restart your computer and there should be a key to press to bring up the UEFI boot menu, probably F11 but it varies between computers. Then select the Linux SSD to boot from and see if it goes.

Or, just unplug the power or data cable from the Windows SSD and see if the computer will boot form the Linux SSD with only it connected. If the Linux SSD does not have a FAT32 partition on it, then I don't think it will boot by itself.

thanks.
no it will not boot, since the bootloader is in the EFI system partition of my Windows drive.
unfortunately, it does not work for me otherwise, i have tried to install linux on the separate ssd while windows drive was disconnected, and it didnt work.
so far, it seems linux installs the bootloader on the available EFI partition even though i pointed the bootloader destination to be the linux drive.