On dual boot KDE+Windows, wanting to delete Windows partition

Hi, I have a dual boot, Kde + Windows and I’m thinking in switching to full Manjaro KDE.
I don’t know if it possible with this actual configuration of my drive :


The idea is to format sda3, sda4, sda6 and merge them in sda5. Maybe it is a bad idea? I don’t know.

I would like to just use gparted to achieve it and not being forced to clone my drive. Even though I think it would be advised to? Or just timeshift wil help me in case of trouble?
Thank you

First of all, you don’t really need to merge them into a single partition. You can simply mount them somewhere and split off some stuff from your root filesystem, as per this guide… :arrow_down:

Secondly, there is a way to merge all of your partitions into a single filesystem without having to physically move or merge anything, but it’s tricky and not for the faint of heart, and you will need the btrfs filesystem for that — ext4 cannot do this.

If you’re a newbie, then my advice would be to just make a backup of all your data on an external medium or on a second internal drive, and then repartition and reformat your main drive, reinstall, and restore your backup.

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Only if you don’t know what you’re doing and is unaware of the risk. Been there, done that, certainly doable.

You can do as you said, but you must confirm that you use UUID in your fstab. Merging partitions will not change the UUID of the one finally used, other methods may require a change after the merge. Execute update-grub (it should be idempotent) in a chroot to make sure GRUB can find the kernel and everything it needs.

Can, but must be done on a live environment, as you’re moving your installation partition.

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I was informed by another manjaro team member that if you change the “before part” of a partition (witch is the situation here) the uuid might change and then you HAVE to change the fstab file and update grub.

No longer the case. I just migrated my installation through CloneZilla to a bigger SSD coming with a new laptop where Windows was preinstalled. I deleted Windows then move Manjaro forward to expand the partition size to full. The UUID doesn’t change. All I need to do afterwards was to fsck as it needs to recalculate the new partition size. I do remember a couple of years ago that moving a partition forward will change its UUID due to the formula used to calculate it. Nowadays, it’s no more complex than just an assigned ID. All you need to ensure is that there are no duplicates in all bootable drives in order not to confuse the bootloader.

I’g guessing you mean “moved manjaro backwards” because that is the case I’m describing?
Ie, You remove f ex sda1, sda2 and sda3 and then merges that space with sda4?

If so, thank you for updating me to standard! :slight_smile:

Well, it depends on which way you consider forward and backward :crazy_face:
Maybe the more consistent description would be moving the start of the partition to an earlier location in the drive.

I honestly should’ve responded yesterday, but thought someone with would walk you through this properly. So you’re dumping Windows.

  1. Update your Grub
  2. Remove partitions 1, 3,4, and 6. (added partition 1 to your list cause that’s the Windows boot partition)
  3. Move Partition 2 to the beginning of the drive
  4. Resize partition 5 to use all the free space before it

You can use either KDE Partition Manager of if you have it installed GParted. Personally I’d install GParted cause even though it’s suppose to be the same as KDE Partition Manager under the hood on various operation it’s far faster.

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Locutus seems to give what you want, but i would suggest rethinking copying home folder to external hard drive and reformat&reinstall then copy back. It might even be faster and certainly safer, as making such drastic partition operations always carry the risk that something goes wrong and then recovering data might be hard or impossible.

Generally, unless you have substantial configurations done that go deeper than the home directory, it’s just easier to copy home to external drive and copy back what you need after reinstalling OS& the programs you use. And as by magic everything continues working as before.

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It’s perfectly safe the way I laid it out. Short of the power cutting out there should be no issues. I agree backup the home folder just in case.

I think that it’s also good to clarify that all of this has to be done with the partitions unmounted, so use a live-usb and do it. :slight_smile:

Edit. And I would agree with above statements to back up your home and delete the files in your old home (unless you are reinstalling manjaro, then you don’t need to delete the files).
Make a new partition with some of the new space you get from deleting you windows stuff and mount that to /home and copy your backed up username directory there. ie /home/username (make sure you get the correct ownership of the directory/files)

It’s always nice to be able to keep your home directory intact.
If you reinstall manjaro and you specify an existing home partition manjaro will NOT delete existing files (only applies to home afaik).

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