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I have a dual boot system and I'm finally ready to remove my training wheels. Its time to say adieu to Windows, I have creates an ISO of my whole drive in case things go wrong and I intent to use GParted from within my Ubuntu system to simply delete every Windows related partition on the SSD (a separate drive) and then I wish to move Ubuntu to the newly freed drive and give it the drive it currently resides on as additional storage.

My question is that because I gave Windows additional storage on the drive my Ubuntu system is currently installed on I am unaware which partitions belong to to Windows and which belong to Ubuntu. So to clarify sda is all Windows and is no problem I'll delete it but sdb contains some partitions I am not certain on. These are some GParted screenshots

Windows

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sbd containing both my Ubuntu install and some Windows storage

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SO from the above screenshots my question is are sdb2 and sdb3 windows or Ubuntu?

thanks

nrmad
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    sdb2 is windows (ntfs), sdb3 is ubuntu imho. I would back up all linux files and go for a fresh install, ( something else in the installer) with your boot/efi (fat32) and /partition (ext4) on the SSD. The other drive will contain your swap space, /home (ext4) and /usr (ext4). I like giving /home its own partition as it can make things easier when it comes to backing up and also restoring data. – Raffles Aug 17 '20 at 10:21
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    I agree with @Raffles: go for a fresh install of Ubuntu on the SSD with /home on the other drive. I don't know what the advantage is of having a separate partition for /usr however, and swap partitions are no longer necessary on modern releases. – Jos Aug 17 '20 at 10:37
  • @Jos unfortunately I can't find the website which gave an explanation as to why to install /home in its own partition, it gave a good explanation but it was a long while back. I haven't had the opportunity to upgrade my machines (talking about swap space) lately so I'm stuck with old technology for the moment. – Raffles Aug 17 '20 at 10:50
  • @Raffles you mean /usr rather than /home I suppose? – Jos Aug 17 '20 at 10:51
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    @Jos Yes take a look here >>> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/685/why-put-things-other-than-home-to-a-separate-partition – Raffles Aug 17 '20 at 11:01
  • Fair enough. This is a level of security hardening and optimization that the OP is not likely to need, however. BTW please expand your comments into an answer. – Jos Aug 17 '20 at 11:05
  • Thanks for the advice guys – nrmad Aug 17 '20 at 11:08

2 Answers2

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I suggest to back up your Linux files and go for a fresh Ubuntu install. You can use timeshift or a similar app, or even rsync to back up your files.

Boot into a live session and choose Erase disk and install Ubuntu or Something else if you wish to include an extra level of precaution, in this case you should know how to set the partitions and mount points and how much size to allocate.

If you wish to manually partition your disk, please refer to this article for the various options.

Follow the instructions. Once the install is complete, you can restore your backed-up files to their respectful partitions.

Raffles
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SO from the above screenshots my question is are sdb2 and sdb3 windows or Ubuntu?

  • sdb2 is an NTFS partition, so it is likely used by Windows but it might be also used for shared data between Windows and Ubuntu (you as the user should know…).
  • sdb3 is an EFI partition, just like sda2. This is where operating systems store their boot data but in your case, sda2 seems to be used as it’s mounted as /boot/efi.
  • sdb4 is your only ext4 partition, so it is most likely your Ubuntu filesystem (undivided), containing all your Ubuntu data.
  • sdb5 is a swap partition used by Ubuntu but it only contains useful data during runtime. After you turn off Ubuntu, it can be wiped safely.

If your Ubuntu OS is working well, you can keep the data of your sdb4 partition (unlike Raffles recommends), expand it to the whole drive (while keeping the EFI partition and perhaps the swap) and continue using it. However, this is a more complicated procedure (see How do I remove Windows but keep Ubuntu?) than just wiping everything and doing a complete reinstall.

Melebius
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