I have an old Vista laptop that I partitioned and installed Ubuntu on, with dual-boot. I've now decided to switch entirely to Ubuntu. What's the best way to achieve this?
My current partitions:
+-------+--------------------+---------------+------------------------------+
| WinRE | C: (dual bootable) | D: | Extended |
| | | +-----------+------------------+
| | | + Ubuntu | Swap |
+-------+--------------------+---------------+-----------+------------------+
I'd like to change this to:
+-------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| WinRE | Extended |
| +------------------------------------------------+------------------+
| | Ubuntu (bootable) | Swap |
+-------+------------------------------------------------+------------------+
(I'd like to keep the Windows Recovery partition in case I ever want to sell the laptop).
I'm not sure whether the Ubuntu partition currently has a boot-loader on it. I also don't want to lose my Ubuntu installation/data. (I'm happy to trash the Windows partitions completely – I have backed everything up from those).
Update: Having checked my bootloader, I've deleted the Windows partitions and I now have free space. Unfortunately it looks like I can't resize the existing / (root) partition because it's mounted. Can I get around this, or do I have to re-install?
Best Answer
In standard installations GRUB is probably not located in Windows partitions but it would be wise to check this first by running the BootInfo script before you end up with an unbootable machine after having deleted a partition.
Once you have backuped all your important data you can then boot from a LiveCD and start GParted as mentioned already. Note that deleting or resizing partitions is possible for unmounted partitions only.