I dual booted for a while but... (solved)

[TheLinuxNoob]

Well I was dual booting Mint with windows 7 for a while because I wasn't sure if I would ever find anything bad or irritating with Linux. However now I love Mint so much I rarely boot win7 it seems pointless that it hogs my HD when I dont use it. How can I erase it and give linux mint my whole HD?

[kvv]

Depending on what laptop you are using, I wouldn't recommend you to remove your Windows 7 completely, simply because it might make customer support covered by warranty problematic (but not void), should your laptop fail. I would recommend shrinking your Windows 7 partition to the minimum possible instead.

Either ways you can use gparted to either shrink or completely remove your Windows7 partition, and then change the positions of your linux partitions (/ and /home) step by step, and voila! you are done.
REMEMBER TO BACK UP YOUR DATA.

This tutorial might help: http://helpdeskgeek.com/free-tools-revi ... -xp-vista/

Edit: For some reason, I assumed that you had a laptop with Win7 pre-installed. If this is not the case, and you have the Win7 CD and everything. Then sure, I recommend wiping your windows partition. :p

[Aging Technogeek]

The easiest way, if you have nothing on the Mint partition that you cannot back up and cannot lose, is to back up anything in Windows that you want to save, and reinstall Mint to the entire hard drive. It will overwrite the old Mint and Windows partitions.

Another option is to boot the Mint live DVD to the desktop, fire up Gparted, (or use a stand alone Gparted or Parted Magic CD) and delete the Windows partition and expand Mint to take the extra space.

May I suggest taking some of the space freed up by ditching Windows and creating a separate Data partition isolated from your Mint installation and connected to your /home partition folders with sym-links. This way, when you reinstall Mint for any reason, the Data partition will not be touched (if you are careful with the install partitioning) and will be available to link to your new installation so you will have access to all your personal data without needing to reload it.

If you need any more detailed instructions, just ask.

[kvv]

Another option is to boot the Mint live DVD to the desktop, fire up Gparted, (or use a stand alone Gparted or Parted Magic CD) and delete the Windows partition and expand Mint to take the extra space.

A quick question: can't you do all this without the LiveDVD? From the hard disk itself?

[TheLinuxNoob]

Well first off thanks for all the immediate help guys, your way better than the jerkfaces on Ubuntu forums >.>! But I actually installed using this 8gb sony USB stick. And I am running the DVD version, it there any way to remount the partition without having to delete mint first? I have nothing to lost on win7 because I dont use it, but Mint has all of my videos and pictures, stuff I would die without!

[Aging Technogeek]

kvv,

Gparted will not work on a mounted partition, especially the one it is installed in. This would be similar to sitting on a tree branch and sawing it off between you and the trunk.

To avoid this, you must run Gparted from a separate source and unmount any mounted partitions before you work on them.

[Aging Technogeek]

TheLinuxNoob,

The second option I outlined does not require reinstalling Mint. You just expand the existing Mint installation to take over the old Windows space.

[TheLinuxNoob]

Thank you so much TechnoGeek you rock man. I am going to go do that now! Thanks for all the great help guys! You rock, mint is way better than windows can ever hope to be...

[TheLinuxNoob]

also quick noob question I saw in your signature it mark it solved how do I do that???

[Aging Technogeek]

Use the Edit button in the upper right of the original post window. Click it and add (Solved) to the original post title bar. Then click Submit