0

I have both Ubuntu and Windows installed. My partition setup is pretty simple:

Partitions

After latest updates to Kerbal Space Program, Ubuntu and Steam, last reason to keep Windows installed perished.

How can I get rid of Windows partitions and give all that space to Ubuntu, without breaking my bootloader? I'm pretty sure that simply deleting partition with boot flag wouldn't be the wisest course of action.

Note that there are 2 similar questions and I have seen them:

Sadly, both are about fresh Ubuntu installations, and neither is about Ubuntu already installed on physical partition.

Community
  • 1
Mołot
  • 115
  • 8

2 Answers2

1

First thing to do is to make a disk image of your entire SSD using something like Macrium Reflect Free Edition (Windows) or Clonezilla (Linux). If you use Macrium, you also need to make a bootable rescue CD/USB. Similarly, Clonezilla should be run from a live-CD/USB. You now have a backup of your current system and a means of recovering the disk to this state if something goes pear shaped when you try to change your partitions/boot system.

sda1 is almost certainly your factory recovery system for reloading Windows in the event of a catastrophe. You probably want to leave this in place just in case you ever want to go backwards. It's only 100 MB.

Now you can use a live-CD/USB with Gparted and remove sda2, your Windows partition. Once this has completed, you could expand the extended partition into the (now) unallocated space if this what you wish.

At this point, I would suggest re-installing the GRUB2 bootloader using the following commands in a Terminal window:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

sudo update-grub

If there is any problem booting, try an alternative method of recovering GRUB (e.g. http://linuxnorth.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/re-installing-grub2/)

If all else fails, remember that rescue disk/disk image...?

CentaurusA
  • 2,672
0

If you just want to keep it simple:

  • Delete any windows paritions
  • Login using a live cd having gparted installed in it
  • Extend your root partition.

If you want to make it a bit more complex, ie, if you free space is not continuous or right next to your root partition (which in not your case),

  • Delete any windows paritions, format is as linux native ones with Gparted.
  • Edit your fstab to mount the newly created paritions at some useful mount points, like /tmp, /var or /home. If you are doing this, I recommend copying everything as is in your original /home to this new location before editing fstab & restarting.

You should now be able to use the new space.

Want to get even more geeky? Migrate to LVM. Its is worth the effort.

BTW you dont have a swap parition. Its good to have one.

Jay Aurabind
  • 344
  • 2
  • 12