I've got a bit of a situation with my personal machine. Occasionally, I need to boot into Windows for work, and I do this using a 2.5" SSD enclosure in my optical drive bay. The Windows SSD works perfectly fine on its own. However, after booting into Windows with the Linux SSD removed, UEFI stops recognizing the Linux SSD as a bootable drive. I usually have to boot into a live Linux environment to fix it, which involves mounting everything, chrooting, and reinstalling GRUB. I think I could use `efibootmgr`, but I'm more comfortable with GRUB. Does anyone know how to prevent UEFI from losing track of the Linux SSD? It's kind of a hassle to go through all these recovery steps every time. Thanks for any help!
1 Answer
Which version of Windows are you using? I’m assuming the Windows SSD is always connected. Also, do you know if your motherboard is compatible? It's worth checking if there's an EFI boot partition on both drives. Finally, when you switch to Linux, do you fully power down your PC, avoiding any fast boot options in BIOS or Windows?
1. I'm on Windows 11. 2. I only connect one SSD at a time, so they're not affecting each other. 3. My motherboard is an ASRock B650 PG Lightning. 4. There's indeed an EFI partition on each drive. 5. Both Fast Boot and Secure Boot are disabled, and I completely power down when switching drives.