I installed windows on a hard disk on which were present stored data, without formatting the disk and then leaving the data there. I would now like to uninstall / remove windows and installed folders, without formatting the disk as they are always present stored data.
First, what version of Windows are you using (7, 8.1, 10)? Second, are you planning on putting Windows back on after format? I asked the second question because Windows 8.1 and 10 have a reset function that will just clean install Windows and applications, but not your data. You can create a new partition (or another hard drive) separate from the OS partition to put your data. If you are using the same storage drive for OS and data then to create a new partition: do a windows search for "computer management" and hit enter key In computer management, go to disk management If storage drive is one partition, then you have to right click that partition to bring up the context menu and select Resize (this will get you unallocated space to create a new partition) follow steps here to create new partition: Creating new partition on storage move all important data over to new partition before uninstalling windows (Linux can read NTFS formatted drives) Edit: I guess I did not read carefully enough. So, you accidentally installed Windows on a partition/drive that contained data you wanted to keep. When you install Windows on partition it usually formats the partition, erasing the data. There are Linux live cd file recovery tools which you can use to try to get some of your data, but there is no guarantee that Windows used different sectors on the storage from your previous data.
