In another tutorial we should you how to remove the Grub bootloader from a Windows 7 / Linux dual boot and in this tutorial we’re going to show you how to reclaim your hard drive space and make your Windows 7 partition whole again.
- Click on the ‘Start’ button and in the ‘Search for programs and files’ box type: diskmgmt.msc, then click on the ‘diskmgmt’ icon that shows in the list:
Disk Management Shortcut
- Once Disk Management launches you will see something similar to the screenshot below.
There should be at least two partition that have no drive letter and no file system listed, these were your data and swap partitions in Linux:
Disk Management
- Now it’s time to delete those partitions ONLY DELETE PARTITIONS THAT HAVE NO DRIVE LETTER AND NO FILE SYSTEM LISTED, otherwise you may lose some data you did not intend to lose.
To delete the partition either click on the partition and press the delete key or right click on it and select ‘Delete Volume’ - Once the volumes, that were previously for Linux, are deleted you will be left with a big green area that is listed as ‘Free Space’
Free Space
- We need to convert this “Free Space” into “Unallocated Space”. This means it will not be associated with any partition (or Volume) and will be available for us to grow our Windows partition into. So select the green area and delete it, you will be left with Unallocated Space:
Unallocated Space
- Now the easy part.
Right click on your Windows volume and select ‘Extend Volume’, follow all the defaults (keep clicking ‘Next) and when you’re done you’ll have one big Windows partition:
Resized Volume
That should get you back to the point you were at before you did your dual boot.
If you’re looking at this because you want to undo your Windows 7 / Linux dual boot, and haven’t removed Grub boot loader yet then please check out the tutorial linked at the top of this post. It’s not the end of the world if you take care of the volumes first, it’s just a little bit cleaner to take care of Grub first.
