Get rid of windowz.

[Paul Howarth]

On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 11:21 -0500, Gustavo Seabra wrote:
> On 5/11/05, Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> wrote:
> > James Pifer wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 11:04, Maciej wrote:
> > >
> > >>Hi all,
> > >>
> > >>I backed up my files and now want to remove the 60 GB windowz partition
> > >>and give my / partition all the GB's. How can I do this?
> > >>
> > >>fdisk -l
> > >>
> > >> Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > >>/dev/hda1   *           1        7965    63974061+   7  HPFS/NTFS
> > >>/dev/hda2            7966        7977       96390   83  Linux
> > >>/dev/hda3            7978        8042      522112+  82  Linux swap
> > >>/dev/hda4            8043        9729    13550827+  83  Linux
> > >>
> > >>--
> > >>Kind regards,
> > >>Maciej
> > >>--
> > >>m.mail at vp.pl
> > >>
> > >>#########################################
> > >># WARNING: New to Linux since May 2005! #
> > >>#########################################
> > >
> > >
> > > I did the same thing a couple months ago. Only difference for me was
> > > that I was removing two partitions. This should apply for you and this
> > > assumes you're using LVM. Not sure if there's an easier way to do it or
> > > not, but this was pretty easy. I also had to do some searching to figure
> > > out exactly how to do a couple of these things. I would back your stuff
> > > up somehow to be safe!
> > 
> > Unfortunately he doesn't appear to be using LVM, so he'll only be able
> > to convert the Windows partition into a Linux partition and mount it
> > somewhere (e.g. /mnt/data) to have that space available.
> > 
> > A better option might be to reinstall; depends how much in the way of
> > settings there are that would need migrating.
> > 
> > Paul.
> 
> Why reinstall? Isn't it just like getting a new HD? I believe all he'd
> need to do is to reformat the partition with ext3 (qtparted maybe?)
> and then assign some label to it... But my knowledge on this is
> limited, I admit.

If he has LVM or reinstalls, he gets all the extra space to use wherever
he needs it.

If he changes the Windows partition to Linux and formats it with a Linux
filesystem and then mounts it, he gets all the extra space under a
single mountpoint, whereas he might want some under /usr, some
under /home etc., and he'll end up moving lots of files around and
making symlinks. Simple but a bit ugly.

If he uses parted to delete the Windows partition at the start of the
disk and reallocate the space elsewhere, the partitions will all get
renumbered and he *might* have boot problems. Nothing too difficult to
fix, but it could be awkward.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>