How to Delete Partition in Linux

Linux allows you to create disk partitions to organize data in an efficient manner. However, sometimes you may need to delete partition in Linux in order to free up disk space, or merge it with other partitions. Here are the steps to delete partition in Linux.

How to Delete Partition in Linux

Here are the steps to delete partition in Linux. We will use fdisk command to delete our partition. Before you proceed further, please make sure to backup all important data present on your partition.

1. List all disk partitions

Open terminal and run the fdisk command to list all disk partitions. If you get ‘permission denied’ error, add sudo keyword at the beginning of the command, as shown below.

$ sudo fdisk -l

2. Select the disk partition for deletion

Next, select the disk partition you want to delete. Here are the common disk partition names.

Type of disk	Disk names	Commonly used disk names
IDE	/dev/hd[a-h]	/dev/hda, /dev/hdb
SCSI	/dev/sd[a-p]	/dev/sda, /dev/sdb
ESDI	/dev/ed[a-d]	/dev/eda
XT	/dev/xd[ab]	/dev/xda

Let us say you want to delete /dev/sdb then run the following command to select it first.

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

3. Delete Partition

When you run the above command, you will see a prompt as shown below, asking you to enter the command to be executed.

We will enter d to delete the partition.

If there is only 1 disk partition, fdisk will select it automatically. Otherwise, you need to enter the partition number. After deletion, you will see a conformation message. If you want to delete another partition, enter d again, else enter p to list all available partitions at the moment.