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So I have a dual-boot Acer S371 laptop with Windows 10 and Linux Mint. The laptop itself came with Windows 10. I have been trying to transition myself to use Linux only, so I started with dual-boot in case I need something from Windows and slowly move over my files.

Recently I figured that I am not using Windows anymore and wanted to get rid of the Windows partitions. But when I was researching myself, I saw some people saying that they don't recommend deleting Windows, as BIOS can only be updated through Windows. And another post says if I delete all the Windows partition, my laptop will not boot-up properly, while another post even says I can safely delete every Windows partition without any problem.

So I am confused, and not sure what I can and cannot delete. Can someone point me into the right direction?

Heres the output of uname -a:

Linux Mint 4.13.0-38-generic #43~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 14 17:48:43 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Below is a screenshot of GParted. I am not sure why sda2 is unknown. sda6 and sda7 are my Linux partitions, the rest are from Windows:

Screenshot of GParted

Screenshot with Disk:

Screenshot - Disk

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  • If you use MBR (instead of EFI) then you should be able to just delete the partitions. Grub should not be affected by this, hence would continue to just boot your Mint system partition. However, I'm not 100% sure if grub still writes stuff in the gap after the MBR and the first partition, so I'd keep the EFI partition around just in case.
    – T Nierath
    Commented May 14, 2018 at 6:49

1 Answer 1

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Limitations exclusion apply see below.

Technically sda1 through sda5 are delete able.

If your linux is or can be in GPT, UEFI, and/or EFI mode leave sda1 alone also.

In many newer bios, you can put the bios update on a USB thumb drive, and update the bios that way. The newest motherboards, the bios themselves can go online, and retrieve the updates automatically. However, this may or may not be the case for your computer.

If you wipe out windows completely your system may not initial boot. However, if you are prepare in advanced you can re-install grub or grub2 and maybe tweak a couple other settings and it should be fine. Go online, and read how to restore grub for your particular distribution of linux. Have a bootable LIVE linux distro available to mount your OS and modify files.

Don't do this on a time deadline Be prepared to spend a couple hours or even a day on this so if something bad happens you are not panicking as you are recovering from the problem.

If you delete windows and/or move the existing linux partition to fill in the free space the partitions will change. You will only have sda1 through sda3.

The /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab files may have to be manually adjusted.

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  • Hi, will keeping sda1 avoid the possiblity of ruining grub? or avoid computer cannot boot-up?
    – Zachary Liu
    Commented May 14, 2018 at 23:42
  • @ZacharyLiu Well if linux is sharing the EFI partition then deleting it is bad, so I would leave it alone especially when its so small. However, grub may still need to be reconfigured. Deleting the partitions will cause the assignments of sda1 to sda3 to be different, as 4 and 5 will no longer exist. If instead you just deleted the windows partition, and made a 100mb place holder you might have an easier time. I would still have a grub disk on hand supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk
    – cybernard
    Commented May 15, 2018 at 0:33

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