Complete Linux noob here, but I just installed Zorin to get ahead of the Win10 end-of-life. To that end, I installed Zorin as my sole OS, replacing Windows entirely. However, my computer (a Lenovo Ideapad y700) has both an internal SDD (on which I installed the OS) and an internal HDD, which of course is still formatted for Windows use, with a Microsoft reserved partition and the data partition being ntfs. I am thinking of fully formatting the drive, similarly to what is explained in this past forum post (https://forum.zorin.com/t/can-anyone-help-me-solve-the-read-write-permissions-issue/8386). I think that more or less sets me up for success, but I did just want to double-check what I should be doing (if anything) about the Microsoft reserved partition on the HDD. I've been finding conflicting messaging on the topic, and much of it geared toward dual-boot setups anyways. It'd be nice to have a sense of whether I should get rid of the msr, or if still has a purpose even though I'm not really thinking of moving back to Windows anytime soon.
Since you already have replaced Windows with Zorin OS as the sole os then I don't see there is any need of that MSR partition you mentioned. And if you in later future decide to go back to Windows then during the Windows installation a new MSR partition will be created, so there should be no problem.
The Disks app should show your drives separately, make sure you have selected the drive that you want to format and then proceed with your plan.
While Zorin OS can read partitions formatted as NTFS, it would be much better to use the native file system (EXT4). I'm sure you already know this, but formatting a drive will delete its contents, so make sure to have a proper backup of your files from that disk before you do this.
As mentioned above you can use Disks within Zorin OS to format this drive. Feel free to ask if you have any questions about how to go about doing this.
Thank you for the replies! I made multiple backups of both drives before I even installed Zorin, and I appreciate the clarity from everyone that I'm not blindly setting myself up for disaster, pain, and misery here.
Okay, I have a follow-up question (and perhaps I hit "solved" too soon, at least from a best practice sense). In Disks, I have the "quick", "slow" and "ATA enhance secure erase" options available. From a bit of searching it sounds like I should probably lean more towards the latter two, but I'd love to know if there any key differences of which I should be aware.
Formatting a disk does not delete its contents. It only alters the partition table of the drive, which is what is used to track where a partition ends and the next one begins. But the data is still physically there, and you can retrieve it using forensic software.
This is why it's so "quick", because it's not modifying any disk sectors.
The second option will delete the data on the disk by writing a constant stream of zeros on every bit. This is of course much slower.
The last option is similar to the above but instead of writing plain zeros, it will write some sort of pattern of rubbish data. This is more effective for SSD because of the way these work internally, compared to traditional HDD.
So, unless you are going to sell this drive or give it away to someone and want to keep whatever data is already stored in the drive private, you can safely use the first option to make this easier on the drive (each write operation counts wears down the drive, and every bit counts!)
