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My Windows 10 was really slow, I was really frustrated so I decided to dual boot Ubuntu. I only put 100 Gigs on it because I wasn't sure if it was a great idea (I have 400gb in total). But it was a love at first test, so I wanna get rid (uninstall) of Windows 10 and put all the 400gb on Ubuntu. The question is, how do i go about doing that? thanks in advance.

Elder Geek
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Arynn
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2 Answers2

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You can accomplish this process with virtually any live bootable media that includes gparted up to and including your Ubuntu 16.10 Live media that you likely used to install your system. If you still have that handy there is no need to create another bootable media. You can eliminate your Windows partitions from within your Ubuntu installation, but to resize your existing Ubuntu partitions you should boot from live media.

Elder Geek
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  • Resizing will take hours, but it's better than a reinstall, IMO. Just don't forget to backup the partition tables beforehand! – jpaugh Oct 21 '16 at 20:42
  • @jpaugh Won't the time to resize depend on the amount of actual data on the disk? – wjandrea Oct 22 '16 at 00:30
  • @wjandrea I would assume a number of variables. Speed of the drive, percentage to shrink or grow, (number of inodes to add/subtract). It's late here and I'm tired so that's all I have at the moment. – Elder Geek Oct 22 '16 at 03:10
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    @wjandrea No, it will depend on the original size of the partition. Gparted copies the entire partition to (the front of) the new location, because it is not smart enough (or dumb enough, depending on perspective) to attempt to interpret the file-system inside the partition. – jpaugh Oct 23 '16 at 01:11
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You can achieve this by creating a GParted live USB (http://gparted.org/livecd.php), and then use it to remove your windows partition, and grow your Ubuntu Partition

EDIT: You will probably have windows reserved partitions too, such as the recovery partition. You can remove those as well, as long as you have/can make a windows recovery disk later, if you decide to go back.

Nicholas Agner
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  • Is there any risk of screwing (i don't mean accidentaly formatting the wrong partition, nobody is that dumb) – Arynn Oct 21 '16 at 13:55
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    Well, yes people are that dumb. But GParted is not difficult. Just make sure at all times that you are working with the correct partition and the correct drive. – Jos Oct 21 '16 at 13:57
  • It may not boot if GRUB was installed over the windows boot manager. If that is the case, take a look here http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual&lang=C#gparted-fix-grub-boot-problem, and everything should work just fine. – Nicholas Agner Oct 21 '16 at 13:57
  • Yes, there is risk in any moving or resizing of partitions (and GParted warns about it). Make sure you have backups of all the important personal files. Everything else can be reinstalled if the process fails at some point. –  Oct 21 '16 at 13:58
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    Actually it may well be that re-installing with the option "Erase and install..." is faster and easier than deleting, moving & resizing partitions and then "fixing" the bootloader... Your choice, just make sure you have backups. –  Oct 21 '16 at 14:00
  • @NicholasAgner I'm sure you're aware that although removing the Windows partitions can be done when running the installed Ubuntu, moving and resizing the Ubuntu partitions cannot be done because they are in used, mounted. You need to boot a live session from USB or DVD and run GParted from there. Please improve your answer by editing and adding this piece of information. –  Oct 21 '16 at 14:06
  • @CelticWarrior Yes, I forgot to add that in. – Nicholas Agner Oct 21 '16 at 14:10
  • By removing you mean formatting it and deleting it making it unallocated space, right? @NicholasAgner – Arynn Oct 21 '16 at 14:20
  • Yes, then growing your Ubuntu partition to take up the Unallocated space.

    @Arynn

     – Nicholas Agner Oct 21 '16 at 14:24
  • Does GParted necessairly need to be booted from usb? Is there a version of it that is just like a normal Windows partitioning software? – Arynn Oct 21 '16 at 15:17
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    Yes and No. You can modify unmounted partitions with gparted but it's easier (and safer) to do this work from a live media with your installations partitions unmounted. Backing up is highly recommended in case something unexpected occurs. – Elder Geek Oct 21 '16 at 17:10
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    @Arynn Unless you're okay with loosing all of your current partitions, backing up at least the partition table is a really good idea. It's easy to fat-finger, and having used gparted for years, I still make mistakes (yes, even despite how intuitive it is). Even backing up the entire disk can save a lot of frustration if things go wrong. – jpaugh Oct 21 '16 at 20:39
  • @Arynn But, if you are okay with the (easier) route of reinstalling Ubuntu, then there's no need to even use gparted; Ubuntu's installer has options to wipe the drive before installing. – jpaugh Oct 21 '16 at 20:40
  • @jpaugh Yeah, i reinstalled it. There was a ton of mess in the partitions, now it's just one big partition. – Arynn Oct 23 '16 at 16:22
  • @Arynn In that case, you might consider accepting an answer, or providing a more detailed one, yourself. (The existing are pretty high-level.) – jpaugh Oct 24 '16 at 16:49
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    @Arynn Regarding the mess, I agree. Partitions are always messy business! Every time I repartition, I realize I could have done something better, and just save that tip for the next fresh install. I used to keep 3-5 partitions, so I could e.g. save out /home in case / got nuked somehow (or I decided to reinstall.) Now, I'm relying on btrfs to do backups via snapshots. – jpaugh Oct 24 '16 at 17:00