Windows drive crashed on dual boot

Question

I have a dual boot system with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, and Ubuntu 16.xx with Xfce4 desktop.

Windows was installed first on a 120 GB SSD.

Ubuntu was installed second on a 240 GB SSD and I was using Grub2 to handle the dual boot.

The Windows SSD died, and its data is completely unrecoverable. I have backups of all the data I care about.

I bought a new SSD and reinstalled Windows, all done with the Ubuntu drive disconnected. But I don't know how to get the dual boot back with my existing Ubuntu install.

How do I get my dual boot setup again without losing my Ubuntu install?

Answer 1

Hello there & welcome to ask ubuntu!

The problem here as you've successfully figured out thus far, is that your boot-loader doesn't have entries for all the operating systems installed in your computer's drives.

Open a terminal and type sudo grub-update.

It's quite likely this will resolve the problem. You can find more info about this method here.

If the problem persists after sudo grub-update you can use os-prober (official package here / sudo apt-get install os-prober)

Otherwise, you can deep-dive into linux and do it manually (it's not that hard, if you're into linux, you can give it a shot). More about that, in this Unix & Linux community question.

Hope this helps!