I have recently installed ubuntu on a previously vista operated laptop, now i need to eradicate all of vista i care not for it at all, I've read some of the threads here and saw someone say something about ubuntu overwriting everything on my hard drive including vista, is that dangerous, easy, and the most efficient way of doing this. i also tried removing the partition of vista by following a response to a thread, using gparted but now im stuck and i failed horribly (very limited computer knowledge).

Since you only want Ubuntu on your hard drive, you could select to use the entire drive during the install. That will delete the partition(s) present and start over.

You don't need to use gparted. You can repartition your drive during the installation. You can use custom partitioning if you want to as well inside during the installation. The installer will use gparted anyway. No need to use it before.

When you say; "using gparted, but now im stuck and i failed horribly" , just what do you mean by that, were you unable to delete the Vista partition, or did you get errors ? It may be a good idea to reformat that Vista NTFS partition as the fat32 type, so you can use that space for file storage. That can be done with the GParted tool. When in Ubuntu, you can run this; sudo fdisk -l , which will give a list of drive partitions.

Another option for someone "very limited computer knowledge".
Seeing as you already have Ubuntu installed and customized, no sense re-installing. You can go to System/Administration/disk_utility and highlight the Vista partition and hit the delete button.
Then you should be able to grow your Ubuntu partition to take up the free space using this utility also ... I'm guessing.

what are they actually called there is a whole list of things there and i dont want to delete the wrong one. im guessing fat32 as in system 32 but i dont know.

Go into root terminal.

It will look something like this:

/dev/sda1 ~crap~crap~crap~crap~crap Linux
/dev/sda2 ~crap~crap~crap~crap~crap HTFS/NTFS


Go to GPARTED. Select the partition that had NTFS. Delete it (it will change to "unallocated space"). Then select /dev/sda1 and click "Resize" and resize it as far as you can.


fat32 is an old filesystem that windows used to use, but vista uses NTFS.
You can access ntfs through linux but if you don't want windows anymore that's pointless since ext3 is better.

If I were you I would keep vista since you paid for it and might need it in the future, but if you are firm on deleting it then go for it.

Fat32 is the file sytem that win9x uses. Both windows and Linux can read and write to these types of partitions.

With GParted, it will list the partitions that you have, and their type. The Partition that you are looking for is a NTFS partition. In the version of linux I run on Linux Mint, these are colour coded a greeny blue colour.

My guess is, you have a recovery partition as the computer did not come with a Vista install disk, this partition typically would be around 5GB in size and formatted Fat32. You then should have another partition formatted HPFS/NTFS containing Vista OS. You may choose to leave the recovery partition in case you want to sell the computer or something and the buyer prefers Windows, or "original condition".
By highlighting the partitions, you can see what type they are. Your Ubuntu might have two partitions, one formatted Linux Ext3, and a "swap space". It may have also put /home in a partition of it's own which would also be Linux Ext3, mine didn't, but I installed in a small 10GB partition.

List all the items it shows if you,re still sketchy.

[QUOTE=orangesky;3827039]

Go to GPARTED. Select the partition that had NTFS. Delete it (it will change to "unallocated space"). Then select /dev/sda1 and click "Resize" and resize it as far as you can.


fat32 is an old filesystem that windows used to use, but vista uses NTFS.
You can access ntfs through linux but if you don't want windows anymore that's pointless since ext3 is better.

If I were you I would keep vista since you paid for it and might need it in the future, but if you are firm on deleting it then go for it.

When i go to gparted it shows me a dev/sda/ but it cant do anything when i right click it says unmount- manage flags- properties. do i create a partition table?

ill list them top to bottom
Empty (0x00)
fat12(0x01)
fat16<32m (0x04)
extended(0x05)
fat16(0x06)
hpfs/ntfs (0x07)
w95 fat32 (0x0b)
w95 fat32 (lba) (0x0c)
w95 fat16 (lba) (0x0e)
w95 ext d(lba) (0x0f)
opus (0x10)
hidden fat12 (0x11)
compaq diagnostics
hidden fat16<32m
hidden fat16
hidden hpfs/ntfs
hidden w95 fat32
hidden w95 fat32 (lba)
hidden w95 fat16 (lba)

cant believe i just typed all that.

It appears you have not installed Ubuntu as mentioned in your first post, everything in that list except for opus is Windows related.
You know what would help, is if you were to run the sudo fdisk -l command in a terminal suggested by orangesky and post the output. You can highlight the output in the terminal, right click on it, copy and paste it here, highlight it again and hit the Quote or Code switch.

Did you put all of those there on purpose?
it *is* posible to install Ubuntu on a fat16/fat32 partition (I've done it myself but with DSL), but unless you selected some non-defualt options during install it will normaly go onto a ext2/ext3 partition.

If you don't mind me asking, how did you install Ubuntu? Is the CD still in the drive? If it is, you might still be running from the CD, with your Ubuntu instalation incomplete.

If you don't have any files you want to save on that laptop (or you can back them up now easialy) I sugest booting from the CD again, dropping all those partitions and starting again. If you realy never want to see Vista again (and I feel the same way) when installing, select the "Use Whole drive for Ubuntu" option when asked which disk you want to use (it will ask you if you're sure, because once you go down this path it can be extra dificult going back). If you want to have a go at partitioning yourself (and you should if you're planing on preminently moving into the linux world), I sugest three partitions mounted as "\" "\home" and "swap".