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Thank you for looking. So I have a 1tb SSD with Windows 10 as the master. I have also a HDD 2tb which had only Linux Ubuntu bionic Beaver, as the slave. The slave has 3 partitions. The largest has Ubuntu, then a 200GB partition has another Win 10 I just did this yesterday, thinking if I had another windows system I could do experiments safely, with my business system unaffected..? All went well until I lost the grub. Well, it went into Grub rescue on the master drive, which I don't understand how to use. I was able to run a 16.04 disk to do a boot-repair, and that fixed it so I at least have access to the master SSD with my business Win10. Whew. And I can select at the BIOS screen, the other HDD but, only will boot to the other Win10 there, and no way to boot Linux which is the big partition on hat HDD. Not sure how to see it. Sorry I get really lost on this partition stuff! Thank you for any help. All best

Chip Johnson
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    Post link to Summary report from Boot-Repair. Do you have all systems installed in same boot mode. Most new systems (since 2012) are UEFI. But users choose how to install by booting installer in either UEFI or BIOS/CSM/Legacy boot mode. All installs need to be in same boot mode. – oldfred Nov 25 '20 at 19:30
  • OldFred, unfortunately, I cannot find the address given to me for the record. I can do another I guess if needed? I guess it probably is. I'll boot from the CD again and do it again. I was messing around with diskpart and now I can't boot to anything on the slave drive. Whoops. I'll be back with a summary. Thank you – Chip Johnson Nov 26 '20 at 20:08
  • Hello again. I have a summary. The link: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/X9JfGJsktd – Chip Johnson Nov 26 '20 at 21:19
  • The Grub menu is gone, I am going to try booting live and installing it again, see what happens. Thanks. – Chip Johnson Nov 26 '20 at 21:20
  • No that didn't work, back to square 1. – Chip Johnson Nov 26 '20 at 22:30
  • You have newer (10 yr olf) UEFI system, but Window installed in the now 40 year old BIOS/MBR configuration. Windows in BIOS mode is known to "forget" to include Linux partitions when it rewrites partition table. You show no Linux partition but have sectors in sda2's extended partition that are not used. Use testdisk or parted rescue to recover missing partition in sda's extended partition & restore grub to sda's MBR with Boot-Repair. Parted rescue seems easier than testdisk https://askubuntu.com/questions/665445/upgraded-to-windows-10-on-dual-boot-and-cant-boot-to-ubuntu-partition – oldfred Nov 27 '20 at 00:19
  • OldFred, thank you. I understand about 30% of that, but I'll look around and see if I can figure it out. Thank you so much. I'll be back. – Chip Johnson Nov 27 '20 at 20:20
  • Oldfred, I can access my files, I did it somehow a couple days ago, the files on my linux partition. Do you think if I get those files, it would be easier to just re-inistall Ubuntu on that partition afterwards, and during that, it will install grub, and maybe also notice my Win 10 part too? I'll wait to hear back on that because I'm not sure how to go about that other stuff honestly. Thanks! – Chip Johnson Nov 27 '20 at 20:43
  • Do you now see Linux partition, or were you using testdisk and its deeper search showed the files? If you can recovery files, do that first, especially if your backup was not current. As long as Windows fast start up is off, grub can find Windows & boot it as long as both Windows & Ubuntu are in same BIOS boot mode. – oldfred Nov 27 '20 at 22:48
  • I can't remember what I was using, but it was with windows. Nothing special either. It may have been before I did the first boot repair though. I'll try to do it again soon. I'll let you know. – Chip Johnson Nov 28 '20 at 00:03
  • I'm sorry, the files are from another partition I guess. They were placed with windows. I can't see anything in that Linux part. You said parted rescue? Do you mean Gparted? Or is Parted another tool? I do know the start and end from the summary right? – Chip Johnson Nov 28 '20 at 00:22
  • Parted rescue. See link above. But you need to have an idea of start & end sectors of missing partition. If one, then start will be a sector after previous or start of extended partition and end is a sector before next partition, so you cover the entire unallocated space. https://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html#rescue – oldfred Nov 28 '20 at 03:43
  • OK. Thank you much. I will try this when I have free time, coming soon. – Chip Johnson Nov 28 '20 at 23:04
  • OldFred, I tried Parted, and I do know the start and stop to the nearest MB but no luck. It doesn't even try, maybe I'm doing something wrong, just asks for start and stop in MB, after stop is entered it just says parted lol. Yeah I don't want to just wipe it because I have other stuff mingled in there too, not sure the location of some of it. Maybe there is a paid program that might do it? – Chip Johnson Dec 04 '20 at 17:30
  • Did you look at partition table? Extended starts at 3419174910 and swap starts at 3840118784 So missing partition will be a sector or two after start of extended and end before the start of swap. If you enter those values, does it not find a missing partition. Otherwise use testdisk. – oldfred Dec 04 '20 at 18:09
  • I did not see those numbers, I was changing GB to MB and entering those numbers from what I saw in a windows program I have called Acronis. I guess you saw that from the report? I don't know what I'm looking at there sadly. So the values you said here enter those at start and finish? The partition with Linux and other things is at the beginning though. Unless it's the one all the way in the back? Sorry I am quite unfamiliar with drives obviously. – Chip Johnson Dec 05 '20 at 14:58
  • Why do you think it was at beginning, you have NTFS partitions at beginning of drive. Gap is in extended partition, close to end of drive. Look with gparted from live installer & you will see unallocated space. Have not used parted rescue but link says it works better than testdisk which finds every old version/combination of old partitions. So if changed a couple of times you must select correct combination of partition(s) that do not overlap or you create more issues. – oldfred Dec 05 '20 at 15:12
  • OK I see there is a Linux swap there, it seemed small but what do I know. I tries those numbers but parted does not like them I need to change to MB I guess? – Chip Johnson Dec 05 '20 at 15:32
  • Well I tried that, I see you can change to bytes which I did and no change. Also there are 3 parts on that disk. 1 big one first 1.152GB, then logical 200.7gb with Win7, then logical linux swap 31.91gb. Can you see the start and stop numbers for that last one? – Chip Johnson Dec 05 '20 at 18:05
  • Are you looking at same drive I am? I see 1.6TB NTFS and extended sda2 which has empty space & swap. So you are missing a logical partition in the extended partition. Go back and look at link above Nov 27 on parted rescue & how that user did it. – oldfred Dec 05 '20 at 18:29
  • I think so OldFred. I also did look at the thread from the other guy you helped, I can't wrap my head around it really. Another problem I never get a long chance to work on it. My best bet will be to find someone around here that understands what's going on and have them do it. I'm just wasting your time. Thank you very much for trying to help. – Chip Johnson Dec 06 '20 at 20:38

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