Your imgur image shows that this is a problem with your nVidia graphics card. Did you change anything in your graphics settings in the BIOS when you were breaking in your drive?

Have a look at this: https://devicetests.com/fix-ucsi-acp...4-nvidia-gnome.

For the external hard drive, I wanted to have a windows-friendly partition so that windows computers can still read the stuff that's on there. I was under the impression that windows cannot read ext4, right? That's why I was trying to partition my hard drive. The second partition I definitely could have used ext4 but some people were saying that xfs is nice because it's faster. I'm using it for gaming so I thought that might be nice. If it's not worth the extra work, I'll just use ext4.

Here's the link to the lsblk command: https://imgur.com/a/3MD4VuU

Thanks

I haven't changed any graphics settings that I'm aware of. I use steam and may change graphics settings in games, but not in the BIOS.

I thought I was sure, but now I'm second guessing... :/ I posted the imgur of my lsblk in the other comment if you'd like to check.

you can have drivers for ext4 on windows too. see for example here: https://losst.pro/en/how-to-mount-ext4-in-windows-10-11

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Doesn't that mean I would have to edit the windows computer that I'm sharing files with? The main point is that I want to be able to share files with other people easily, and therefore wanted their windows computer to be able to understand the ssd's language. That's why I thought I had to have a windows-friendly partition on the hard drive. Am I wrong in thinking this?

The simplest way to get compatibility between Linux and Windows is to use the ntfs format for your Windows partition(s). Linux can read and write this format, so you can easily copy over to your Windows partition anything you have created in Linux that you want Windows to have access to.

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You can find your filesystem type for partitions easily with: sudo parted -l lsblk options can give you that info also. Then you will know if it is xfs or ext4 or whatever.

Creating/modifying partitions on a secondary, external drive should not have any effect on the OS on another drive. The image you posted shows an EFI partition and one Linux partition on the SSD while it shows two partitions (2nd much larger) on the 2TB drive so doing parted command will tell you what they are.

I don't use Nvidia but have read a number of thread indicating that new drivers are needed with a kernel update. Discussed at the Nvidia forums at the link below with possible solutions. Don't really know this is part of the problem but modifying partitions alone should not do what happened in your case. May have inadvertently done something on the primary OS drive??

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Sounds good. Any tips on how to fix my computer to get back into it?

I did the command you suggested and here's the photo for that: https://imgur.com/a/IS2Pbnu

The sandisk cruzer is what I'm booting linux with to open the terminal, the Extreme 55AE was the one I was partitioning, as you can see I managed to make 2 partitions, and the third would be my laptop's hard drive.

Being a newbie to linux, it looks like I bit off more than I could chew with this project, but any tips on fixing this would be greatly appreciated.

If this helps anyone, here is my /var/log/boot.log

https://imgur.com/a/rdkipsV

Really appreciate the help

what I see: failed to mount /backup
You either need to fix it or do not try to mount it at all. Which drive/partition would it be?

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I would like to fix it if possible. I don't know the answer to which drive/partition it would be. How do I find that answer? Thanks!

If there is a /backup mount line /etc/fstab, commenting it out with a # at the beginning the line may fix the problem.

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Awesome, I'll try that! Can you give me a little bit more information about how to get to the fstab? I booted from my jump drive to get into the terminal but if I type /etc/fstab, permission is denied. Is there a way I can get to the fstab from the command line at the failed boot? (sorry I don't know what to call that, but hopefully you know what I mean.)

Thanks for the help!