I have got four partitions of my hard drive whose specifications are as follows

c: this partition has got windows 7 and linux mint 12 installed. the version of linux mint 12 is installed within Windows 7

d:
this partition has got linux mint 10 installed onto it.

e:
this drive stores my personal data

f:
this drive also stores important data other than programs, etc.

Now that I have installed newer version of linux mint(linux mint 12), I would like to get rid of Linux Mint 10 that is installed on d:

Can I do this by formatting d: and if Yes, kindly help me with the same.

the d: drive partition does not appear in windows 7 operating system(due to ntfs filesystem of windows 7 and ext4 filesystem of linux mint 10)

How can you have two OS installed in the same partition? I don't think I understand your partition scheme fully. Could you please type as root

and post the output.

Since you have installed Mint 12 now, the bootloader is probably managed by Mint 12. So, there should be no problems in just formatting the partition containing Mint 10. But, just make sure your you have backed up everything before you do anything about partitioning the HD.

I cannot format the partition containing linux mint 10(d: drive) from windows environment since this partition does not show in windows 7 operating system. Can I format this drive from linux mint 12 environment since this drive(the one containing linux 10) is visible on linux mint 12 platform

Regards,

Upendra Pratap Singh

For clarity, please provide the information that nonamedotc asked for.

The partition that you are calling D should be shown by W7, regardless of the file system it has been formatted with. It will not be shown by Windows Explorer because it does not contain a file system that W7 recognises but it should be shown by Disk Manager (as it was called in WXP and may be called in W7).

I got the following message on the terminal as per the instructions given.
the same output appeared whether I typed in linux mint 10(julia) terminal or linux mint 12(lisa) terminal.

Here "pramila" is the name of the root user

linuxmint pramila # fdisk 1
fdisk: unable to open 1: No such file or directory
linuxmint pramila # fdisk 2
fdisk: unable to open 2: No such file or directory
linuxmint pramila # fdisk 3
fdisk: unable to open 3: No such file or directory
linuxmint pramila # fdisk 4
fdisk: unable to open 4: No such file or directory
linuxmint pramila #

It is called Wubi. Mint is installed into a container-file on the Windows partition.

You are getting the error messages because you have typedwhen the command given to you was It is a lowercase L, not the number one. The best way to run commands given to you is to use cut and paste to avoid such errors.

Oh yeah ! I completely forgot about that! Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm sorry to commit such a mistake.

Here I present the output to the given command. this command was typed in the terminal window of Linux Mint 12(lisa) platform.



pramila@linuxmint ~ $ su
Password:
linuxmint pramila # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb7f65c10

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 102402047 51200000 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 102402048 307202047 102400000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 307202048 512002047 102400000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 512002048 976771071 232384512 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
linuxmint pramila #


Regards,

Upendra Pratap Singh

Which of /dev/sda1-4 is the drive you call D? It should be /dev/sda3 but it is important to be 100% sure that it is before formatting or deleting it!

Once you are sure you can either format the partition to delete all the files or you can delete the partition. Which do you prefer?

I would like to format the partition so that it can be used to store personal data such as movies etc.

I also want this partition to be visible in windows 7 environment so that I can access its content through windows 7 operating system.

Regards,

Upendra Pratap Singh

Well, that would be easy. You can format the partition as NTFS and have it counted at boot by adding an entry in /etc/fstab. If you boot into windows, it will mounted anyway.

Just make sure you have ntfs-3g installed in linux for you to be able to access the NTFS partition.

Then you will have to format it with a file system that is accessible by both Linux and Windows -- FAT32 or NTFS. FAT32, formatted from Windows is probably easiest.

Can that partition(containing linux mint 10 julia) be formatted from linux Mint 12 environment. It is because this partition is not visible in Windows.

Tell me some command in linux that could do so.

Regards,

Upendra Pratap Singh

Yes. You can. Just make sure Linux Mint 12 handles the GRUB before you touch other partitions. If not, you will have to deal with other problems later.

For formatting, I suggest using gparted. Very easy to use.

Hi,

what is gparted? Is it a command or some software and please tell me how to use it.

How to ensure that Linux Mint 12 handles the GRUB. Please help me with this.

Regards,

Upendra Pratap Singh