Converting a windows drive to Ubuntu Drive

Question

I am recent convert to Ubuntu and just loving it. Right now, I can access my windows drive from ubuntu, however, I want to delete the windows partition and make it an ubuntu partition. I have already backed up my data. How do I go about it.

Answer 1

If you're using Ubuntu 12.10, you can format your partition by opening the Disks application, select the partition, click the two cogs icon below and select format.

Then choose ext4 as the file system type. Your windows NTFS partition is now a Linux ext4 partition.

Automounting your partition (optional)

If you want it to automount at boot, you may want to modify your /etc/fstab file.

Create your mount point. You may choose to mount wherever you want but normally partitions are mounted either under /media or under /mnt. The former place would make the partition easily unmountable like a pendrive while the latter is more "permanent".

Open a terminal (ctrl + alt + t) and type sudo mkdir /mnt/choosename. Change choosename to whatever you like.

Type sudo blkid and copy the UUID of your drive.

Press Alt + F2 and type gksudo gedit /etc/fstab, then add a line like this:

UUID=your-UUID-here /mnt/choosename               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

Once you reboot, your partition will be present in the selected mount point.

Answer 2

Ok, I think this is how you do it. In a nice two steps.

When you format the drive, it makes it a Linux filesystem.

So,

1. Format the Windows drive to FAT or Ext4.

2. Copy and paste (Click and drag the mouse, that's the easiest way) the files onto the new drive.

Now you have the Linux filesystem on your drive and your files in one!

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

the Disk Utility program (ubuntu 12.04) or Disks (12.10) allows you to do basic partition operations in a nice GUI interface.

You have it in the Software Center.

Once installed, open it, select the partition you want to edit, then format it. Choose the ext4 partition file system as you don't need to access with windows anymore.