After nine months of not having booted my Windows even once, I think it’s time to wipe the Windows related partitions once and for all and claim the space. The problem is I think the way my partitions are structured, it may not be that easy. I am assuming everything other than the two ext4 partitions will have to go. What do you think? r/linux4noobs -

Someone even suggested I nuked the whole thing and started again, which would be the absolute last resort and only when I ran out of space.

EDIT: In the end, having considered all replies, I decided to go with a compromise. I wiped the NTFS partitions and made an ext4 out of the unallocated space. Then, I moved /home to that new, larger partition and if it all continues working for a day or two, I will wipe the old and smaller /home, which is not mounted now anyway, and use it for storage. This allocation will last me for ages until I have to reinstall the OS, at which point I will use the opportunity to tidy things up. I thought this was not the time to break my system moving partitions. There were some hairy moments (eg when a UUID changed quietly and the system failed to start) but overall it was OK.

Thanks to everyone for the help. This thread was very educational and I hope others will find it useful too. As a sidenote, I posted the same question to a much bigger subreddit and I received very few responses and little help. So, the much smaller Lemmy wins hands down!

  • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
    5·
    17 hours ago

    I would simply delete sda1 and sda2, then that whole part will be available as 1. Format as ext4.

    If you play games with steam you could then use it as a space to put games. Steam handles it for you. When you add a disk via Steam settings, it will be listed as an option.

    Moving partitions is a tedious task and doesn’t always pan out, I personally wouldn’t risk it. Let it be a thing to do if you would ever reinstall completely for whatever reason and start fresh then.

    Also, backup backup backup.