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Can I delete Windows off of an SSD, from Linux? (Without formatting) (piefed.zip)

submitted 2 weeks ago by purplenimblefrog404@piefed.zip to c/linuxquestions@lemmy.zip

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So, I recently wanted to try Linux on my main Desktop after liking it on my Chromebook. So I bought a second SSD and put it on that so i wouldn't risk messing up anything with Windows. But I really like Fedora Linux on my desktop, and I want to wipe windows off my other SSD without removing all of my data on it. So that I can have the TB of storage on my Desktop again.
Is this possible to do from the Linux OS? Or do I need to boot it up with Windows for this?
And if so, how do I do it?
Thanks! :)

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[–] muhyb@programming.dev 5 points 2 weeks ago

Technically you can delete the Windows partition and it would be fine. However you should backup your files in it if your Windows partition was all about C:\ drive. If you are gonna backup anyway, just do the backup and format the whole disk and start with a clean slate. It's better if your disk is not formatted as NTFS.

If you have D:\ drive and want to delete C:\ drive and only keep D:, you should also delete System Reserved and EFI partitions as well. You can create another partition with this place but that would make 2 partitions in the disk. Normally Gparted (or any other partition program) can merge partitions without you losing data but I have no idea if they can do this with NTFS as well. So, I would go with the first option here. Backup everything and format the disk with a Linux file system. If you are gonna use it for mostly media files, XFS could be a fine choice. If you want it as a general separate disk, go with ext4.

If you want to learn more, I can answer your questions or link you Wiki pages.