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Currently, I need to install Ubuntu on my laptop (originally using window 10) to run Drone robotics Studio. But I have only 10GB left, so I am planning to install Ubuntu on my external hard drive.

However when I tried to give partition using gparted in ubuntu testing version, I found there were already partitions in my external HD. And one of the partitions was Microsoft Reserved Partitions. So I searched it on Google, and I found out it is essential to use external HD in Window. Well, I am planning to use Window and Ubuntu, both of them on my laptop. And also the external HD.

And my question is:

  1. Is it Ok to delete Microsoft Reserved Partition to make External HD unallocated state?
  2. If no, what is another solution?
Ahmed Ashour
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    The Microsoft Reserved Partition should not be deleted. Are you saying that your external drive has a Microsoft Reserved Partition? It would be very unusual for that to be the case. Worth pointing out, the partition, should only be around 16 MB. – Ramhound Nov 07 '18 at 14:53

1 Answers1

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The answer is that it is possible to delete this partition, but that you should not delete it.

For one, the Microsoft Reserved Partition stores the Windows bootloader files. Windows will not boot if this partition is deleted.

For another, this partition is at the beginning of the drive Windows is installed on. Deleting it will free space up at the beginning of the drive, and this space will not be immediately accessible for use in other partitions placed elsewhere on the drive. There are tools that allow moving partitions around on the drive, and SSDs are making this less of an issue, however there is always a greatly increased chance of severe data loss when you attempt to rearrange the partitions on your drive.

music2myear
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  • I don't think that it contains bootloader, at least in UEFI set-up. 
    sudo hexdump /dev/nvme1n1p7 
0000000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
*
1000000

    It's all zeroes on my system.

     – Bogdan Mart Aug 28 '23 at 18:16
  • .. and mine is the last partition on the drive, the boot partition is first. I also have a container in front of it, with EXT4 and the like as extended partitions between the system partition and this. It does have BOOTMGR content on my system. – mckenzm Feb 11 '24 at 06:16