My brother asked me for my copy of the Serenity movie. After looking through all my external harddrives to no avail, I resigned myself to setting up my cold storaged desktop to find the file. My nice iPod white room has been overtaken by cables and ugly black and fake silver finishes.

Then I had to look through my Windows XP and Ubuntu installs to find the durn thing.

I’ve been meaning to get rid of Ubuntu for years, but a lack of spare HDD space to play musical chairs with my data has relegated that project to the “too hard basket”. Until now. New room, (practically) new computer, eh?

I wrote this in the hopes that it will help someone else just as much as a record for myself in case I need it for next time. Well, here we go!

Background
First, a short description of my setup. I have 3 HDDs in my desktop:
1. 150 gig: Windows operating system C: (10 gig) and general storage D: (140 gig) [Windows NTFS format]
2. 150 gig: Linux operating system: swap, root, home (100gig) etc. [ext3, ext2, whatever other linux formats]
3. 300 gig: general storage for videos equally divided into two partitions (mentaiko and tobiko) of 150 gig each. [linux ext3]

I have a spare 40 gig external HDD, which was my old laptop HDD, and a 25 gig HDD which is actually an old iPod. I have negligible clumps of space on my current laptop HDD and on D: on HDD #1.

The Problem
As you can see, it can be a right pain in the buttocks to look for stuff. Windows cannot read ext3/ext2 formatted drives. Linux can see NTFS, but cannot write to it. So I find myself booting in and out of the different installs quite often.

Ubuntu is generally not that bad, and there are some things it does that I believe are more functional than the way Windows handles it, but most of the time I’m flying blind with no one to guide this n00b. I’m strictly a gui girl, and command line scares me. I used to stay clear of VCRs, DVD players and other like consumer electronics even. (But I don’t have to any more because they all have rather good GUIs these days).

I originally installed Ubuntu to turn my desktop box into a file server. Samba worked okay for awhile but I didn’t know anyone else who was familiar with Ubuntu or even Linux in general, and surfing the technical forums wasn’t exactly the most interesting thing in the world. Most of the howtos do not work as advertised.
There were also some programs that I just couldn’t use in Ubuntu. Like iTunes and Windows Live Messenger, which is terrible but I don’t like how Pidgin works, and I couldn’t get general mp3 functionality which meant the easiest way for me to play music was with videolan which I love for playing videos but not music!

Not to mention the lack of driver support in Ubuntu. I have some obsolete niche server video card (?Zolari Z7). It’s very weak, and is worse in Ubuntu because there is no Ubuntu driver. I also have a wireless card but of course it does not work out of the box in Ubuntu. I’d have to go online to find an update, but then I can’t go online with no wireless access…

Besides, Windows XP and I are best buddies these days. Things just work, which is more than I can say for Ubuntu. I’ve even made my peace with the Windows home networking wizard. Yes, I am such a sell-out.

So basically, the problem is, how do I format harddrive 3 into a Windows-readable format in as painless a way as possible?

The Solution
I was faced with, while in Ubuntu, having to transfer 30 gigs and 25 gigs at a time onto the old iPod and the old laptop HDD, then booting into Windows and emptying them out there. That would have taken hours and hours over USB2.0. I tried hooking up an ethernet cable between laptop and deskie but for some reason Ubuntu wouldn’t talk to my laptop (pfft).

After surfing through a number of forums and trying out a couple of programs, I believe the following method is the best way to delete a Linux install from a dual-boot computer, and to reformat and repartition everything into a Windows readable-format. And you can do it all through Windows without ever having to step foot into Linux again! Blashphemy, I know, but no friendly geek has ever put his hand up to help me, so there.

Programs to download:
1. Ext2 Installable File System for Windows
2. EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition [optional]
[both of these programs are freeware]

Other programs you’ll be using:
3. Windows Disk Management [type 'compmgmt.msc' into the run dialogue]
4. The fixmbr command in the Windows XP Recovery Console [you'll need your Windows XP install disc]

What worked for me

Converting Linux ext2/3 formatted drives to Windows NTFS the painless way
Install Ext2 IFS. This is a nifty little program that allows Windows to read/write to Linux formatted drives. I transferred the data from tobiko to the home drive on HDD #2. Then I wiped and reformatted it to NTFS using Windows Disk Management.

I then transferred the data from mentaiko to the now NTFS-ified tobiko. I wanted to get rid of the partition altogether so using Partition Master I deleted the mentaiko partition and then expanded tobiko to encompass the full capacity of HDD #3. Partition Master is like Windows Disk Management but with more functionality. You can increase the size of your partitions without losing data! How awesome is that. Well, they recommend you backup your data first but I didn’t have any space so, taking a deep breath, I just let it work. No errors

If you get the paid version of Partition Magic, you can even merge two partitions without loss of data, which would be simpler than transferring the data off, deleting the partition, then increase it, etc.

But if you want to keep your partitions, you can just leave out the Partition Master stuff and reformat it using Windows Disk Manager.

So at this stage I have a brand spanking new Windows-accessible 300 gig HDD. You’ll want to delete the Linux stuff now. So after backing up my home drive onto my nice new HDD #3 which I have decided to rename mentaiko, I deleted all the linux partitions on HDD #2 and reformatted it to NTFS using Windows Disk Manager.

I now have more space than I know what to do with, which is a nice change

Getting rid of the Linux boot record
This method does not work with Vista. This thread may help you if you are using Vista. It also seems to depend on whether you installed Linux or Windows first in that case. I get the impression that it’s trickier if you installed Linux first.

I had actually installed Linux first. So after restarting your computer, you’ll get this horrible looking GRUB (that’s the Linux boot loader) error screen. What to do?

Chuck in your Windows XP install CD and boot your computer to it (make sure your computer boots to CD before HDDs). Follow the prompts to get into the Windows Recovery Console (the Microsoft support here gives you more details on this step if you need it). At the command prompt, type in ‘fixmbr’. Follow the prompts to get your shiny new non-GRUB master boot record!

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Frankly I’m as amazed as anyone that I managed it all without totally screwing up either one of my OSs or accidentally losing a whole bunch of vids.

And now that I’ve finally admitted Linux defeat, I think I’m going to have to hand in my geek badge. At this rate I’ll be using a mac next!

Now excuse me while I go find out how to make a DIY wifi antenna extender.