How to erase two times elementary OS from my harddisk and install elementary OS again

Question

I'm a totally beginner, but I am facing a crazy complicate problem.

The Story:

1. I installed elementary OS next to my Windows 8 successfully on my Laptop.
2. As a bloody beginner I did a unbelievable stupid mistake and deleted some important parts of the system.
3. I still had saved all my Documents, i like elementary OS anyway more than windows, so I decided to reinstall elementary OS again, this time on my whole computer, I hoped to delete windows and the broken OS this way.
4. I chose "format everything and install elementary" in the installing-menu.

5. But now my laptop starts still with dual-boot-menu. Instead of choosing between windows and elementary OS, he ask if I want to start in elementary OS or elementary OS Freya, very weird.

6. I searched for help in the Internet and tried to ask in some Linux-forums but as person that starts to learn the very basic things about Linux and computer stuff in general just a week ago I was lost. Somehow I didn't know for what I have to ask for and so I got not-useful answers, somehow the answers was pretty complicate and let me again alone.

7. Anyway I learned a lot so I try another question here, that hopefully lead me successfully to the solution.

So that's my new question: I want to reinstall elementary OS again and format my two harddisks. I want to use gparted in the installing-menu for that. How can I make sure that the new installed elementary OS will find both harddisks and use both?

This is how my harddisks are partitioned at the moment:

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54505 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 500GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

1 1049kB 538MB 537MB fat32 boot

2 538MB 496GB 495GB ext4

3 496GB 500GB 4153MB linux-swap(v1)

Model: ATA LITEONIT LMT-32L (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 32.0GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

1 1049kB 8589MB 8588MB Basic data partition

2 8589MB 9127MB 538MB fat32 boot

3 9127MB 27.9GB 18.7GB ext4

4 27.9GB 32.0GB 4153MB linux-swap(v1)

Thank you very very much for your help, it would give me back all the fun with elementary, because in the moment it's mainly frustrating.

Answer 1

Short answer: Install elementary on the LITEON disk. Use the other disk for your personal files and swap.

Long answer: The use of two different drives may seem complicated, but this is actually going to be very useful for you. You have two different drives: the 32 GB Liteon is an SSD and the 500 GB Hitachi is a more traditional HDD. I suppose Windows was installed on the SSD: the reason is that while more expensive (hence the smaller size), an SDD is much faster. You want to install the OS and apps on an SDD to have fast loading times, and keep all you personal files on the HDD because of the larger space.

Now, to partition your drive:

LITEONIT LMT-32L:
All the space in ext4 for the root of your system (choose "/" as mount point)

Hitachi HTS54505
4153MB linux-swap
All the rest in ext4 for your personal files (choose "/home" as mount point)

If any of this seems complicated, or if you have further questions, or any doubts at all, don't hesitate: ask for help. The amount of knowledge you need to use linux is pretty low, but the amount of knowledge you need to actually install linux is insanely high.

For further reference: https://askubuntu.com/questions/343268/how-to-use-manual-partitioning-during-installation