[Stiabhan]

Hello, linux newbie here. I have a dual boot of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Mepis 11.0 (I think?). Not going to be using that laptop anymore and want to put the drive into an external usb shell. Want to keep the Ubuntu, but delete the Mepis partitions to make room for use as a backup storage external drive. In gparted or any of the other partitioning programs, how do I figure out which partitions belong to which OS, so on and so forth. I don't want to guess and delete the wrong partition, naturally. Thanks for the help in advance.

[TerryNet]

Best way is by name if you named the partitions. Second best would be by size if they are different sizes. Or by format if different formats. Or by space used/free if you know that.

If you are not going to use the computer any more why keep the OS?

[DVOM]

When you start GParted from within one of your OSs, the parititon the active OS is on will be mounted (locked) while the other OS partition won't.

[saikee]

Post the terminal output of
(1)" sudo fdisk -l" or in root "fdisk -l"
and
(2) "cat //boot/grub/grub.cfg" or "cat //boot/grub/menu.lst"of the distro you want to keep
then we can take you by the hand.

[TerryNet]

Just want to add that my post was on the assumption that you were not going to boot to either of those OSes again. If you do, then I like the posts from DVOM and saikee better than mine.