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completely new to ubuntu, just learned about it a day ago and needed a free OS so decided to check it out.

I previously had windows 7 installed on my hdd with two partitions. Windows and essentials for C (30gb) and games/music/movies for D (900gb). My windows stopped working (FAILED TO LOAD FROM BOOT DISK) so I decided to switch over. I loaded up 13.04 unto a USB and installed it while formatting C and win7 loader to ext3. Didn't unmount everything because I can't back up 900gb of files.

Now when I load my hdd from the boot menu, all I get is a 'Missing Operating System' message.

Is there ANY way to delete windows 7 completely to use ubuntu exclusively, and keep my files without buying another hdd???

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Answer:

Yes

Explanation:

Ubuntu is capable of accessing files in the NTFS file system (windows file system). Anything you have stored on the D:\ drive is accessible from Ubuntu.

To remove windows and install Ubuntu, simply insert the live cd installer, and when given the option to select which hard drive to install to, click the little button that says something like "manually manage partitions". From there you can delete your partition on your old C:\ and select the empty space for your Ubuntu installation.

Your only restriction will be that you cannot install Ubuntu software on the second, NTFS partition (D:\ in windows, but will not be named the same in Ubuntu. See the bonus note below). This can be worked around by using an application called Gparted. It's a partition manager application that can run from a bootable cd or usb in a custom linux environment designed only to run Gparted. That's the safest way to use the app. Since it does a lot of powerful things, and you can break things if you do something wrong, you should research the program a bit before using it. Gparted is the best partitioning software as far as utility goes. I won't go into detail about that here though.

BONUS NOTE: A little information about Ubuntu file system, since you're a new user:

Linux in general uses a more powerful filesystem than Windows. Files are written to the HDD differently too. Files are written to fill up every HDD stripe before moving on to the next, to optimize space, and they start from the beginning of the stripe. Windows starts anywhere between the beginning and the middle, and only writes one encoding on each stripe, it won't start the next coding in stripe X and finish it in stripe Y.

Linux also doesn't use drive letters to define partitions. Each partition has a descriptive name, an arbitrary title, and is mounted in one grand filesystem defined simply "/" meaning the root. Notice the use of forward slash in linux, vs C:\ backslash in Windows.

Linux also stores the files differently. When you move a file from one folder to another in Windows, it literally takes the data, and moves it somewhere else on the hard drive. Linux maps every file to their respective locations, so when you move files from one folder to another (on the same HDD) the transfer is almost instantaneous since it only changes the digital location, not the file's physical location.

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