Hi, so I logged into my EOS instance today after using Windows for a while and decided to swap back to Linux. I got onto my instance and updated. After it finished, I was getting stuff re-set back up which then the computer froze. I waited for a bit then just hard reset the PC. After restarting the BIOS couldn’t find either OS (Which are on separate drives) which then I just full shut off the computer. After turning it back on, the windows drive was found, but the EOS one isn’t there anymore.
One thing that I noticed though was it says the windows bootloader is on the drive that the EOS instance was supposed to be on.
I tried to look up the issue but most of them are talking about after a bios update, which I haven’t done (I have before and know what that issue is, but secure boot and other settings are the same as before it froze). What should my steps be from here? Getting a live USB set back up?
That sounds a lot like a failing drive. I would boot off a live USB and make sure the drive is still in good shape.
I would hope it isn’t failing, since it is a m.2 that is less than a year old. Is there a certain utility I should do to check?
I would test the hardware from a bootable live environment - my usual go-to tools are either HBCD or UBCD.
Both include a range of drive diagnostic tools, ideally you would run the one for whichever manufacturer made your drive just because some of them include a few extra manufacturer-specific bells and whistles but the generic ones are usually fine.
HBCD boots into a live Windows environment while UBCD is a less sophisticated (but much faster to load) oldschool text UI style environment, so pick whichever you’re more comfortable working with.
It’s a Samsung 990 Pro, would using “Samsung Magician” which I believe is the manufacturer drive tester work, or would using one of those tools probably be better in this case? At least currently, I’m doing smart tests on it then I’ll do a drive test to see if it works fine
Samsung Magician is “good enough”, SMART tests are ok but they aren’t infallible - I’ve seen plenty of drives happily pass SMART when they’re very clearly on their last legs, which the full tests usually prove 
The reason I suggest using a bootable tool is in my experience you’ll generally get a more reliable result if you’re not running the tool from the same drive you’re trying to test - it guarantees that nothing else that’s actively making use of the disk will interfere.
Yeah that is kinda what I was expecting as well with the smart test. But at least I’ll have some info when both the Smarttest and the actual drive test are done
The actual full scan didn’t show anything was wrong.
I’d recommend to copy your personal data to an external drive (or a few external drives!), just in case.
And it is a good idea to do this periodically.
REISUB is also a useful tip for gracefully handling a computer freeze:
[Tip] Enable Magic SysRq Key (REISUB)
So I should just reinstall and copy files out?