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My linux is Mint, but I think the issue is the same. I have this old AMD PC Gamer with Linux and Windows and traditional bios booting.

I had Linux 20 in a SSD in a SATA II port and Windows 10 in another SSD using PCI-e to SATA III adaptor (to get more speed). When I tried to update Mint 20 to 21, it got stuck in the middle. After a while, I decided to install Mint 21 fresh from a usb stick... bad choice! Windows won't boot anymore.

Problem is, the Linux SSD had the Windows boot partition, the other SSD have the Windows itself only, a NTFS partition only. I wish to add it to grub boot menu but os-prober won't find Windows, witch make sense with my low knowledge. However, I think if I use a Windows tool to rebuild a boot partition, it will mess with my grub and I will miss the Linux boot.

What should I do?

Gustavo
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    You mention two OSes, but no product (Ubuntu system) that is on-topic for this site. I suggest you read https://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic (FYI: The on-topic link also shows Stack Exchange sites where your question would be on-topic; but this isn't SE Unix & Linux that covers Linux) – guiverc Sep 21 '23 at 12:15
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    FYI: I'd expect grub to detect a windows system without issue (it does for me anyway; all versions up to windows 11), however the version of grub plus grub default scan make a difference (esp. 2.06 & higher). Main issues will be if your windows is using encryption, has hibernate enabled (fastboot is a form of hibernation thus this can prevent windows from being detected) etc.. Not all Linux systems use grub though – guiverc Sep 21 '23 at 14:03
  • @guiverc Mint is based on Ubuntu, and as the issue is about booting and grub, thought it won't be different... – Gustavo Sep 21 '23 at 20:47
  • This site is an official Ubuntu Q&A or support site, Linux Mint is not on-topic here, and don't forget Linux Mint have products based on Ubuntu and Debian, including runtime adjustments because they rely on packages from OSes they do not control or have upload rights to. Ubuntu on releases from 20.10 & later are built so all architectures boot using identical methods (for that release), which tends to differ to Ubuntu-based systems that usually aren't built for amd64, arm64, ppc64el, s390x, riscv64 etc thus often only consider amd64 (some of this impacts only ISOs). – guiverc Sep 21 '23 at 22:45

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Yes, Windows will takeover boot from grub if you try to let it repair on the disk that contains Linux.

I'd recommend to backup anything you need from the Windows disk (hopefully it's not bitlocker'd) to the Linux disk then remove the Linux disk while doing Windows repair. When that's complete you can use the solution linked below to update grub and see both again as boot options.

GRUB does not detect Windows

multiboot
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