will formating to Ext4 and partitioning my 2nd bootable windows drive make my PC unbootable?

Asked by Jacques Malaprade

Hi,
I have recently moved to Ubuntu and still have a HD with windows which I now want to format to Ext4 to use for backups and storing data that used to be be on my NTFS partition. As windows XP NTFS drive is the 1st drive (sda) and is the boot partition, I would like to know if I format and partition this drive, if I will still be able to boot into Ubuntu which is on 2nd drive (sdb). I am currently on a dual boot.
Many thanks in advance.
Jacques the newbee.

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Jacques Malaprade
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Jacques Malaprade (malapradej) said :
#1

Anyone?

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delance (olivier-delance) said :
#2

You again!
I'm not sure to understand.
If you want to remove Windows XP from first disk, to use it as a backup drive, you can partition it.
Ubuntu MBR is on first sector of disk, which will be untouched by partitioning.
This MBR on first disk points on /boot folder of Ubuntu partition on second disk.

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said :
#3

the answer is no. it will not affect your other drive.
however, windoze will not recognize the ext4 format, so it won't be able to access any files/data you store there.

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Jacques Malaprade (malapradej) said :
#4

Thanks Guys,
I will give it a try tomorrow. I hope to finally get rid of the ghost in the machine. Bye-bye XP partition. Hello to more space for linux data. Cheers,
J