Ubuntu
gparted package

format and manage old xp partition

Asked by Robert Jameson

I want to take a hard drive that has been partitioned by XP and an XP installation that has been abandoned. It has a 25 Gig partition with the remaining 80 gigs UN formatted or partitioned. Will Ubuntu from a USB, formant the hard drive (wiping out the XP information) and partition? I want to go with Ubuntu as my operating system on this older laptop. If you burn Ubuntu, from your website, to a CD, does the CD become bootable, asking to format/partition the drive?

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Chris (fabricator4) said : 		#1

The Ubuntu installer, if you tell it to use the whole disk will remove all the existing partitions and set it up to use the whole drive. You can also do this manually if you wish but "use the whole drive" mode of installation is the easiest.

I would recommend 10.04 LTS for an older machine. If you burn the iso to a CD it will normally be bootable, as long as the program you use to do the burn supports this. Nero and most other common programs should be able to do this fine.

Chris

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said : 		#2

when you install from a CD or a usb stick, you will be asked if you want to use an existing partition or the entire disk. if you choose the entire disk, it will erase everything there. nothing to worry about. it's pretty straight forward.

if you have any questions while installing, don't be afraid to ask.

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