Need to recover the hard disk space occupied by Linux from Windows

Question

I purchased a Dell Laptop which came with pre-installed Ubuntu Linux. I installed Windows 7 ultimate.During installation I deleted the existing partitions thinking that would completely remove Linux from my machine. Now when I start my machine, it takes me to Windows7 as expected. But I think Linux is not completely removed as I find nearly 100 Gb missing (My HDD is 320 and C: D: E: comes only to 220). In the computer management , I see 102Gb unallocated. How can I remove linux completely from my machine and get lost 100GB back.

Answer 1

If it is unallocated, just create a Windows partition and use it to store data.

If there were Linux in that space, you wouldn't see "unallocated".

Answer 2

Try using open source Gparted

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

It lets you add partitions, delete partitions, resize partitions. My experiences have been only using it on non-RAIDed drives. The tool is fairly versatile. You can use it for a variety of file-system types.

Answer 3

You can either:

• right-click on the partition you want to extend to fill the extra space (which might only be the E: one; I'm not sure if consumer versions of Windows can span volumes across different partitions) and click Extend Volume.

or

• right-click on the empty space and make a new partition (which will initially present as a new drive on your system, but you can change to be a folder on an existing drive if you so desire)