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Deleting a partition

shutter
Community Veteran
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Registered: ‎06-11-2007

Deleting a partition

Running Windows 7 Pro... and have got Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa as a Dual Boot.

I want to get rid of Linux Mint 19  and install an earlier version 18.3 in it`s place.

looking at the partition structure is like this

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

/dev/sda

 

/dev/sda1         NTFS       104 MB                                                       WINDOWS 7 LOADER

/dev/sda2         NTFS    25026MB           136389 used

/dev/sda5        EXT4       69704MB             11604 used                   Linux Mint 19

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

+/-  Change

/dev/sda     ATA SAMSUNG   HDD 320GB

 _____________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

If I select the sda5 EXT4 partition and then click on the minus sign... it clears  the Linux Mint 19  and replaces it with "Free Space".

From there, If I go to "install now".. it demands a root something.... which I haven`t a clue what it wants... so If I click "back"  it then replaces the free space with Linux Mint 19 again.

Trying to "install alongside" the existing os`s...then I am stumped, as I don`t know where it is going to be installed.

 

Step by step instructions would be useful... so as I only delete the Linux Mint 19 partition, keeping my WIndows 7 partition safe..

Thanks

 

6 REPLIES 6
VileReynard
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Re: Deleting a partition

Don't bother with Mint 19.1, then. Cheesy

Just install Mint 18.3 from USB into the free space (or sda5, if its still present - overwriting everything that is there).

sda5 is your combined / (root) and /home partition.

If its convenient, tell the install that you don't want a swap partition - if you are installing into free space, you could choose to have a swap partition.

Make sure to put your boot location as sda - Windows and Mint 18.3 will be detected and a dual boot menu built for them.

If you want to preserve any data files, take a backup first.

Actually, I upgraded Mint 19 to Mint 19.1 today - Mint 18.3 is based upon Ubuntu 16.04 (circa 2016) - so some applications may be a bit dated. Mint 19 is based upon Ubuntu 18.04 (April 2018 ).

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

shutter
Community Veteran
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Registered: ‎06-11-2007

Re: Deleting a partition

So, from what you say,... I get to the state where the Mint19 partition is changed to "Free Space"... then continue the "install" from that screen ?   It does give a warning from there, that the changes cannot be undone ?  so do I just carry on? and Mint 18.3 will be installed in the "free space" allocated ( sda5) ? ? ?

VileReynard
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Re: Deleting a partition

Almost certainly Yes - but a point that needs clarifying:-

Have you deleted sda5 outside of the install or is the install doing the delete of sda5 - perhaps in order to split it into

two partitions - a root partition and a swap partition?

 

If the installer does this then the installer needs to write these changes to the disk partition table, this is quite safe since Windows doesn't look at sda5.

For peace of mind I would run a program before you start the install called gparted (supplied in the menu of the USB boot) which allows you to view your partitions graphically - and optionally delete/resize them. If you make any changes your partition table has to be updated - this is something where "the changes cannot be undone".

I tried an install in a VM of a Mint variation (which uses a blank virtual disk), but got no warnings and the final page before the install started was a summary page:-

2.png

So if all you see are references to sda5 (and possibly sda6) everything is fine. References to sda1, sda2 and sda3 are not.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

shutter
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Re: Deleting a partition

@VileReynard  Thank you very much for your detailed reply.... not that I understood most of it !  ( as you know, I am not a linux geek ! !  )... however,... Whilst waiting on your reply... I found some free software that did the job .... AOMEI PARTITION ASSISTANT.

(It says  "safely partiltion your hard drives)... and I was very careful on my selection processes..  it  took about 5 mins from installing, to getting to the point of Deletion... the program actually does not delete until you finally "approve" it... and then it took about 30 mins to complete..

After it had done it`s stuff... I rebooted... but   Shocked  WOE Embarrassed    WOE  Undecided WOE !..Cry

The hard drive was borked !... would not boot... kept telling me that there was no bootable partition... went through a lot of trauma, and various ideas to get it back, then remembered to GOOGLE   FIX MASTER BOOT RECORD... found a linky to

How to fix Windows 7 when it fails to boot        https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/win7-windows-7-mbr,news-33163.html

Did the bootrec.exe /FixMbr   on the command line.... and IT WORKED>>>>>> Thumbs_Up

Yahoo  yahoo yahoo   Cheesy   All is well in the world....

I have since checked, and the sda5 section has indeed been made free space... now called "Unallocated" .

 

VileReynard
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Re: Deleting a partition

Evil You have a program called gparted on your USB - you just select the partition to delete and confirm - and it does it safely in about 2 seconds!

From the Mint menu on your USB boot before/after the install choose gparted. It deletes partitions by removing the corresponding entry in the disk partition table. The contents of the partition are left unchanged.

Note that if you run bootrec in future, it will destroy Mint - so you might want to make sure you keep backuups of important data.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

shutter
Community Veteran
Posts: 22,206
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Registered: ‎06-11-2007

Re: Deleting a partition

@VileReynard  OK.. thanks for that... I will bear it in mind... IF .. i need to do the same thing... fortunately, all is well... Just finished updating my backups for pics, videos, and docs  I have rebooted Win 7 three times since, and it was good

Not done the install of 18.3 yet...  gotta eat some time ! ! .Grin