So, I recently wanted to try Linux on my main Desktop after liking it on my Chromebook. So I bought a second SSD and put it on that so i wouldn’t risk messing up anything with Windows. But I really like Fedora Linux on my desktop, and I want to wipe windows off my other SSD without removing all of my data on it. So that I can have the TB of storage on my Desktop again.
Is this possible to do from the Linux OS? Or do I need to boot it up with Windows for this?
And if so, how do I do it?
Thanks! :)
Don’t use NTFS file system with Linux, it is a pain…
I think re-formatting is your best option here, but think, buying a new 1Tb SSD, format it to ext4, replacing old Windows one and transfer important data to that new SSD. Would be the easiest way.
You can buy a case for the old windows SSD and use it as external disk.This.
Technically you can delete the Windows partition and it would be fine. However you should backup your files in it if your Windows partition was all about C:\ drive. If you are gonna backup anyway, just do the backup and format the whole disk and start with a clean slate. It’s better if your disk is not formatted as NTFS.
If you have D:\ drive and want to delete C:\ drive and only keep D:, you should also delete System Reserved and EFI partitions as well. You can create another partition with this place but that would make 2 partitions in the disk. Normally Gparted (or any other partition program) can merge partitions without you losing data but I have no idea if they can do this with NTFS as well. So, I would go with the first option here. Backup everything and format the disk with a Linux file system. If you are gonna use it for mostly media files, XFS could be a fine choice. If you want it as a general separate disk, go with ext4.
If you want to learn more, I can answer your questions or link you Wiki pages.
I think you should try to use gparted to delete the windows partition. Then you should be able to extend your Linux Partition.
Backup any files you need from Windows first.
It’s easy to extend a partition into the next available space, but it’s much harder to extend it into the previous space. So if windows was installed in the first partition and Linux on the second, this might require reformatting. Your options would depend on what filesystem you’re using.
When I made the first leap from dual-booting Mint / Windows this is what I did. As someone else said, there does remain some “artifacts” after unless you know what partitions to remove, for me it was a fucky bootloader/GRUB that still retains the Windows EUFI and BIOS menus, etc. But it works.
A few months ago after more than a year of working fine, after an update (I assume kernel, as I really don’t use that PC in a way to have fucked it up like that) something tripped/screwed with SecureBoot, though it was always disabled. It would only boot if I navigated to the BIOS through those stupid menus to clear the keys and reboot.
That’s what pushed me to just do a full install, and I’d wanted to try KDE anyway. Just from my personal experience, a “native” install is just so much smoother!
So you don’t want to format the drive, but you want windows to no longer be there?
I guess you could just delete the windows folders. The drive is still going to be formatted as ntfs and have a bunch of leftovers from windows, but your data will still be there.
If you mean wipe windows OS off the SSD but keep your data such as music and photos that was on the same drive, that will be tricky if you had all your windows and data on one partition.
You could shrink the windows partition and create a new one to copy all your data to, then wipe the windows one, then grow the new partition…but there are a lot of steps where you could accidentally delete your data. Might be better to mount the windows drive and copy any necessary data to your new Linux drive first.
