Delete Partitions from Old Linux Mint Installation?

[weslowsk]

I was running LM 17 until several months ago when I decided to move to LM 18. I did not upgrade in place; rather, I installed LM 18 alongside LM 17 in a separate partition on the same disk.
Over several weeks, I migrated all of the applications/data that I needed from LM 17 to LM 18. Now, I'm ready to reclaim the partition space on my hard disk which is currently being taken up by LM 17.

I'm wary about removing the old LM 17 partitions because they have lower partition numbers than LM 18 and I'm concerned that once they're removed, my LM 18 partition number will bump down and things will get "messed up".

Here is a screenshot from GParted of the disk partitions:



LM 18 root is mounted at /dev/sda6
LM 17 root is /dev/sda4 partition; LM 17 /home is /dev/sda5 partition

If I remove partitions #4 and #5, will that cause #6 to bump down to #4? Or, will it stay at #6?

I checked my /etc/fstab and there is no reference to any /dev/sda; rather, there are only references to partitions by UUIDs and IDs. So, it sounds promising that any partition changes I make won't need to be reflected in /etc/fstab...right?

Any other tips anyone can suggest for what I'm trying to do?

[AZgl1800]

Were it me, I would save Timeshift and Grsync and SystemBack to an ExtUSB HDD.

This is overkill I am told, but I know that I can put it back together.

Save your Personal Data also... I backed up all of that today. No problems.

Reinstall 18.3 from fresh and let it claim the entire disk.

then restore from the ExtHDD and you will be all good to go.

Ext4 Partition ExtUSB HDD.png

[weslowsk]

thanks for the tip...I'll give it some consideration.

Any other advice out there? Specifically, will dropping the smaller numbered partitions cause problems?

[austin.texas]

will dropping the smaller numbered partitions cause problems?

No.
I have done it - no problem.
You just have to be sure that Mint 18 is in control of your Grub menu (MBR) before deleting Mint 17

[austin.texas]

Also, after deleting Mint 17, you will want to update Grub to remove the reference to 17

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub

[weslowsk]

Yes. I could also do that with Grub Customizer too, right? Just remove all the entries pointing to Mint 17?

[AZgl1800]

Grin

All of those little "Gotchas" are why I do the full backups, and then just do a full Install to format the whole drive, and then restore the "State of things" from my ExtHDD

Nothing can go awry that way.

[austin.texas]

Yes. I could also do that with Grub Customizer too, right? Just remove all the entries pointing to Mint 17?

I suppose you could, but I banned Grub Customizer from my machines a long time ago because I did not like what it does behind the scenes...

[weslowsk]

Thanks for the tip. I wasn't aware what GC does under the covers. I've had no problems with it so far, but it sounds like it complicates things. I appreciate your viewpoint on the matter.
I'll keep my eye on it.

[weslowsk]

I finally got around to doing this. I decided to surgically remove partitions instead of copying/wiping the whole disk.
No issues at all in the whole process. Because I have a GPT disk and the disk was using primary partitions, there was no renumbering of partitions when I removed partitions.
When I removed the LM17 partitions and fired up Grub Customizer in LM18, GC detected that the partitions were gone and it automatically cleaned up those LM17 entries from Grub for me. All I had to do was persist its changes which I did.