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I am fed up with windows so i want to delete whole windows in partition c and install Ubuntu on it without loosing my data from other partitions can i do it? If yes then how. Help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

Hritik
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    Simply follow the installer prompts carefully. WARNING: It's up to you to do it properly and carefully: If you make a mistake, a typo, or misunderstand the prompt, then you may destroy your data irretrievably. If your data has value to you, then it's worth backing up to another media before doing something inherently dangerous like installing an Operating System, Consider installing to a throwaway Virtual Machine once or twice to make all your mistakes before doing the install for real. – user535733 Sep 22 '20 at 11:32
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    Related: How to use manual partitioning during installation? You can simply use this answer but you can remove the Windows partition if you don’t want to use Windows anymore. Before doing that, make sure that you identify the partition to delete correctly (Ubuntu will not show the Windows drive letters). You can lose your data otherwise unless you have a reliable backup (which is recommended anyway). – Melebius Sep 22 '20 at 11:37
  • Thanks for the response, but I have a 1 TB hard disk and my useful data is of nearly 700GB and on other 250 GB windows was install. And now i don't have a external drive to back it up. – Hritik Sep 22 '20 at 11:38
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    Don’t be impetuous when it comes to irreversible actions like wiping your operating system. There are two kinds of people: Those who back up their files and those who haven't experienced losing all their files yet. Ask yourself: Are your experiences with Ubuntu, installing an OS, and partitioning enough to do this correctly on the first attempt? Because there will be no other… Have you installed Ubuntu actually yet? – Melebius Sep 22 '20 at 11:45
  • yeah once i accidentally wiped my system while installing Kali Linux I am experienced with these things and do ubuntu 20.4 have replace with windows option if yes then does it only wipe windows partition? – Hritik Sep 22 '20 at 12:06
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    @Hritik “do ubuntu 20.4 have replace with windows option if yes then does it only wipe windows partition?” It’s possible to do this in the installer but you need to choose “Something else” in the “Installation type” step and configure the partitioning manually. By the way, your text would be much more readable if you used interpunction… – Melebius Sep 22 '20 at 13:01
  • @Hritik To make us able to create a specific answer for you, please [edit] your question to add the output of the command lsblk. Don’t forget to apply code formatting to pasted terminal text. You should also show how your partitions look at Windows, e.g. by including a (readable) screenshot of Disk Management in Windows. – Melebius Sep 22 '20 at 13:36
  • @Melebius I can't add screenshots because laptop in which i am installing Ubuntu was dead. and i have installed ubuntu by for by formatting "sda2" partition which was windows c drive and successfully created an swap and efi partition. Its installing now finger crossed. – Hritik Sep 22 '20 at 17:08
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    @Melebius I have successfully installed ubuntu 20.4 without losing my data. I am using an Intel Bay Trail CPU so just troubleshooting few bugs, anyway thanks for the help! – Hritik Sep 26 '20 at 12:51
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    Does this answer your question? How to use manual partitioning during installation? – Melebius Sep 29 '20 at 06:37

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By convention, partition 'c' in UNIX is the whole disk, so reformatting this will destroy all the data on that drive.

Best practices are to back up your files on a USB or other media first and then reinstall the files after installing UNIX. This way, you don't need to be extra careful about protecting existing data during the install. If you no longer need windows, it's best to do this even if the data is on a different partition as you can reload the data into a faster and more functional native file system, rather than keeping it in a win/dos filesystem.

George W
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  • “By convention, partition 'c' in UNIX is the whole disk” {{Citation needed}} – Melebius Sep 26 '20 at 13:19
  • This has been the UNIX convention forever. Partition a is root, b is swap and c is the whole disk and d, e, ... are other file systems. Unix partitions are not to be confused with DOS disk notation like C:. https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix3/upt/ch44_04.htm – George W Sep 26 '20 at 18:29
  • Thanks for the link. Your statement might be valid for historical UNIX on non-PC hardware but for Linux, see the 6th paragraph of the article. – Melebius Sep 28 '20 at 06:17