this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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Help needed: Getting rid of Windows on Dual Boot System (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by gigachad@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@programming.dev
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Last Update

Update 1

Hey guys, when I installed Linux a year ago, I created a Windows / Linux Mint dual boot system, because I thought I would need Windows from time to time.
Guess what, Linux Mint is so great I only entered Windwos like 2 or 3 times, but in the end I don't need that trash anymore and want to get rid of it.

When I set up the dual boot, I read somehwere to seperate the partitions, so I installed Linux Mint to its own partition as you can see below, maybe this helps for the taks. I have a 1TB Toshiba HDD /dev/sda. I used it as basic file storage under Windows, now under Linux I just annexed it for the same purpose. It has some weird Windwos partitions I don't know what they are and how do they get there, I only mounted dev/sda4 for storage.

But the evil Windows partition is that 500 GB SSD. As my steam library is expanding a lot, I need space! So how can I get rid of Windows in a safe way? In my boot menu (it's called "GRUB", right guys?) I have a couple of entries, 2 partitions are named Windows but only one of them actually boots into it, the other goes into repair mode and then bootloop. I can look those up if they are important.

So, how can I get rid of the Windows stuff, make the boot menu recognize this, while not harming the Linux disk?

That is how the partition schemes of the 3 disks look like:

1000 GB Crucial NVME

/dev/nvme0n1p1	FAT		649 MB		/boot/efi  
/dev/nvme0n1p2	Ext4	41 GB		/root  
/dev/nvme0n1p3	Swap	18 GB  
/dev/nvme0n1p4	Ext4	941 GB		/home

1000 GB Toshiba HDD

/dev/sda1   NTFS	419 MB  Microsoft Windows Recovery Enviornment (System, No Automount)
/dev/sda2   FAT32	315 MB  EFI Sytem (No Automount)  
/dev/sda3   Unkn.	134 MB  Microsoft Reserved (No Automount)  
/dev/sda4   NTFS	981 GB  Basic Data  --> mounted at /media/gigachad/Data
/dev/sda5   NTFS	367 MB  Microsoft Windows Recovery Environment (System, No Automount)  
/dev/sda6   NTFS	18 GB   Microsoft Windows Recovery (System, No Automount) (Push Button Reset)

500 GB Samsung SSD

/dev/sdb1   FAT32   105 MB  EFI System (No Automount)  
/dev/sdb2   Unkn.   17 MB   Microsoft Reserved (No Automount)  
/dev/sdb3   NTFS    499 GB  Basic Data  
/dev/sdb4   NTFS    694 MB  Microsoft Windows Recovery Environment (System, No Automount)  
Free Space 2.1 MB
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[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Looks like multiple partitions. Since it's all on one disk, that's easy. Just delete them or reinit gpt. Disconnect the other drives to be safe, so that you don't hit the wrong one.

I like using like gparted. Boot the gparted live image, delete partitions or reinit gpt, then create one big partition and create your favorite filesystem. For data, I usually use xfs, but I don't have any good reason for that over anything else.

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So you are saying I can just easily format the disk dev/sdb? If I want to disconnect the other 2 disks before, I have to boot into a gparted live USB stick, right? What about all those Microsoft Windows Recovery partitions on the Toshiba disk, do you know where I come from? Can I just remove them and merge them with the biggest partition using the inbuilt partitioning tool? Thanks :)

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

Shut down, disconnect drives, then boot gparted. Otherwise yes to all.

Just be really really sure about what you're deleting, or have good working and tested backups.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Merging the space after your Data partition is easy. Merging the space before it is slightly less trivial, but doable. GParted is your friend. It has the ability to grow an NTFS to the right, as well as slide it to the left. The slide is copying everything over though, so it will take time.

(Note that if you are mounting Data in your fstab using the string /dev/sda4 and you delete the partitions before it, you will likely need to update your fstab.)

Personally, I don't think you need to go as far as unhooking your Linux disk and live booting, but I understand being unsure about it. If any data on these drives is your only copy, that's your first mistake. Back up your data elsewhere (rule of 3, ideally). Then just use gparted carefully.

Afterwards, you'll need to regenerate grub to get the extra boot options to go away. Should be straight forward on mint.

It's gonna feels so good deleting all those nonsense windows partitions.

Edit: I glossed right over your links to your updates saying you had already done all of this lol. GG glad it went smooth for you! Also, I am surprised canceling the NTFS slide mid-copy didn't break anything lol. You might want to back that up and format the whole drive just to be safe. Never know when you'll find the files that were corrupted by that....maybe run an fsck on it.

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Also, I am surprised canceling the NTFS slide mid-copy didn't break anything lol

Me too. After hitting cancel, a new "Force cancel" button appeared, but I luckily waited it out. Gparted reversed all actions it did and also copied back the couple of MB it already shifted over, when it finally told me it succeeded. So I guess the data is fine, but yeah I backed it up before anyway. Thanks for your write up, even if it came a but too late ;)

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 17 hours ago

Cool, I didn't know it was smart enough to undo the copy, that's good to know/hear.

[–] ZonenRanslite@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago
  1. Format the Windows SSD with the build-in partition manager
  2. Edit fstab to add the new partition
  3. Run sudo update-grub to update grub
  4. Enjoy
[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

I now delete all partition on /dev/sda/ but my data partition sda4. Adding the unallocated space from sda5 and sda6 was no problem, but the partitions left were problematic. They are only about 800 MB and gparted tried to prepend that by copying the whole 913GB. I canceled the operation which would have taken more than 4 hours and prayed to god. He didn't listen but it worked anyway.

Now after another grub-update the computer now boots directly into Linux, I have more free space and I got rid of the Windows bloat.

Thank you so much!

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

If you want to keep the data on your Toshiba HDD as you have it mounted in Linux. (Always have a backup ;) You can just delete the other partitions on that drive, unmount the data NTFS, and with gparted app you can probably move and expand that data partition to fill the drive. Then remount. Your Linux crucial looks independent so nothing should be affectes

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
  1. I made sure Linux boots with the other drives removed
  2. Removed the NVME drive with Linux Mint
  3. booted into Gparted Live
  4. deleted all partitions on /dev/sdb and created a new ext4
  5. Restarted, the PC directly boots into "Automatic Repair" Windows stuff, I guess that comes from /dev/sda. However yeah I have to go to boot menu, choose the NVME, and then I get to the grub menu where I can choose Linux Mint - annoying
  6. I mounted the new partition and edited fstab, which went well
  7. Run grub update, the sdb Windows entries are gone

Now unfortunately I am still directly booting into the Windows repair mode. Before I directly booted into GRUB where I could choose or do nothing for some seconds to automatically boot into Linux. In BIOS the old Toshiba HDD is actually at boot order 1, but the Linux drive does not appear there.

I will now make a backup of the already mounted data partition on sda (couple 100s of GB, but anyway) and try to remove the old partitions on that disk and merge them with data. It still stays NTFS, but I am too lazy at the moment to completely wipe it. Maybe something goes wrong with boasted anyway lol.

Thanks so far!

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 21 hours ago

In BIOS/UEFI you will likely see multiple bootloader options, one for windows and one for Linux (I think mint's is called "ubuntu" by default). Choose the Linux one.