Hey guys, I’ve been using Linux Mint and Windows 11 via a dual boot setup on two laptops for a while.
I hardly ever use Windows 11, except on my work laptop, so I want to delete it from my personal laptop.
How can I do this? What is the safest and easiest way, and what should I bear in mind?
Thank you in advance for your answers, and have a sunny day!
Many are suggesting deleting the Windows partition and resizing the Linux one, but another option is to back up your data and do a fresh Linux install.
During setup, you can delete all partitions and create new ones—ideal if you want to separate the root system and /home folder. Keeping system and user data on separate partitions makes future reinstalls easier, as your personal files can be preserved.
I second this point, a fresh install is definitely the way to go.
Boot into the Linux system, launch the given partition manager or install gparted, locate the Windows partition (will probably show NTFS file system), and just delete the partition. If you can, it may let you then reclaim the free disk space. Depends on your layout. Of course, as many would tell you, only do this unless you’re sure you’ve backed up any important data from the Windows partition…
Put GParted ISO on a thumb drive using Rufus or BalenaEtcher, in your BIOs change the boot order so that GParted boots first, boot into GParted an then readjust/delete your partition as you need be.
Pretty straightforward for the most part.
Hi, noob here and currently putting together a carried USB drive, does this work with ventoy?
I honestly never tried Ventoy myself so I can’t really give you a proper answer to this however, after reading into it I see no reason why it wouldn’t work? So long as GParted can access the systems disks there shouldn’t be an issue.
You should have a live USB of the distro you want to use and ensure you have backups of all the data you care about. Then the easiest/quickest/least error prone way is to just wipe the whole drive and reinstall the distro from the live USB. They typically have an option to wipe and install things from an empty drive. Then just restore your data from your backups.
You could also, after creating backups, from a live USB environment delete the windows partitions and resize the linux ones - being careful not to delete the EFI partition as that is where the boot loader lives. You can optionally delete the windows boot loader from the EFI partition as well. If done right you should still be able to boot into your linux system afterwards though when missing with partitions like this, especially when you don’t know what you are doing, it can be easy to break the boot systems. These can be fixed from a live environment and there are many guides out there on how to do that.
You can always just reinstall the system again if you mess things up and cannot figure out how to fix them - so always prep for that case by backing up everything you care about first.
Step 1: make a backup / clone the disk
Step 2: double check the backup
Step 3: Assuming you’ve got a grub bootloader, boot into Linux Mint, use GParted or Gnome-Disk-Utility
Step 4: Identify your NTFS Windows 11 partition, the utility should show if it is mounted or not (it should not be mounted unless you added it to /etc/fstab
Step 5: resize your Linux mint partition (ext4fs), & make sure you don’t accidentally move the partition
Step 6: sudo update-grub to remove the entries for Windows 11 since it doesn’t exist anymore
More info on if you’ve got an HDD vs SSD, MBR vs GPT partitioning, or a screenshot of your partition table from either of the disk utilities in step 3 would help us help you
This misses the step where you delete the windows partition - between steps 4 and 5. You have to delete the NTFS partition and resize your linux partition to fill the empty space.
You can also create a new linux partition if you wanted as a separate space to store stuff.
Good spot & thank you for the correction!
Gparted. I’m pretty sure it’s bundled with Mint. Identify which partition it is, then simply delete it. Then you can create a new partition on the newly unallocated area or extend an existing partition onto it.
You might have to edit the bootloader’s boot entries and remove the Windows boot manager.