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When installing Ubuntu 12.04 there are the two options

  1. Install Ubuntu alongside Windows
  2. Remove everything and make Ubuntu the only OS

I have installed Ubuntu alongside Windows.

If I choose second option, will it remove only the other operating system or will it remove all files on the hard disk alongwith the os?

Pabi
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Sai
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    everything == everything – Lucio Jan 09 '14 at 03:19
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    I see this same question all the time here in AU. Apparently the translation(in description) must be replaced with a warning, something like "This option will erase the whole hard drive, including any additional partitions". – NickTux Jan 09 '14 at 03:48
  • @Pabi: please correct the TYPO in the title of this question also ... as in my edit suggestion in http://askubuntu.com/review/suggested-edits/409373 ( but which you just corrected ...) – Pierre.Vriens May 01 '15 at 12:49

1 Answers1

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Whenever we install Ubuntu on a system with another OS already on our hard drive(s) we will be presented with the following choice:

enter image description here

Choosing to "Replace Windows with Ubuntu" will indeed install Ubuntu on all of your hard disk space. Multiple partitions will be deleted for a default partition layout (usually a root / partition, and a swap partition).

Therefore we are presented with as warning saying:

This will delete all of your Windows 7 programs, documents, photos, music, and any other files.

So yes, your doubt is justified. You should not choose this option if you still had non-backuped data on your drive, or if you wanted to preserve your Windows partition.

You can install "alongside" of Windows if you had unparitioned space for Ubuntu on your drive, or in case you let the installer do the re-partitioning (i.e. shrinking of the Windows partition) to makes space for Ubuntu.

Still, this procedure though usually safe puts your data at some risk. Therefore we should always make a backup of our valuable data before we do antyhing to our partition, or install a new OS (this is not specific to Ubuntu).

In case we are familiar with partitioning, or we need a partition layout different to default we can proceed with "Something else" as depicted above to make a custom partition layout before installation.

In case we had lost our data during the installation process we may have luck to recover at least some of our data. This is not an easy procedure but it can be done. See

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Takkat
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