⚠️ Before You Start – Critical Safety Check
Double-check you’re booted from the NEW SSD (the one with ZimaOS).
Identify the OLD Windows SSD – we’ll use lsblk to spot it by size and partition layout (Windows drives usually have an EFI partition and a large NTFS partition).
Step-by-Step Instructions (from ZimaOS terminal)
Open a terminal
If ZimaOS has a web UI, look for a “Terminal” app. Otherwise, connect a keyboard/monitor or SSH into your Beelink.
List all drives
bash
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,MOUNTPOINT,FSTYPE
You’ll see something like:
/dev/nvme0n1 – likely your new ZimaOS boot SSD (smaller partitions, ext4/btrfs)
/dev/nvme1n1 or /dev/sda – likely your old Windows SSD (has ntfs partitions, maybe a small vfat EFI partition)
👉 Confirm which one is the old Windows drive by its size and existing partitions. If unsure, run sudo fdisk -l for more detail.
Unmount any auto-mounted partitions from the old drive
bash
sudo umount /dev/nvme1n1* # replace nvme1n1 with your old drive’s name
Ignore “not mounted” errors.
Wipe the partition table (clean the drive completely)
This removes all Windows boot data, hidden recovery partitions, etc. The drive will appear empty.
bash
sudo wipefs -a /dev/nvme1n1
(Again, replace nvme1n1 with your old drive’s identifier – be 100% sure it’s not your ZimaOS drive!)
This is irreversible. After this, the drive has no partitions and no filesystem.
Create a new partition table (GPT) and a single data partition
bash
sudo parted /dev/nvme1n1 mklabel gpt
sudo parted /dev/nvme1n1 mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%
Format it as ext4 (great for Linux/ZimaOS data)
bash
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme1n1p1
If you want to share this drive with Windows PCs later, use mkfs.ntfs instead (install ntfs-3g first if needed).
Set a label (optional but handy)
bash
sudo e2label /dev/nvme1n1p1 DataDrive
Mount it in ZimaOS
ZimaOS usually auto-mounts drives. If not, you can manually mount:
bash
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/datadrive
sudo mount /dev/nvme1n1p1 /mnt/datadrive
To auto-mount on boot, add to /etc/fstab (ZimaOS might have a UI for this too).
After this, you will have:
✅ ZimaOS booting from your new NVMe SSD
✅ Old Windows 11 SSD completely wiped, no bootloaders, no hidden partitions
✅ A clean ext4 data drive ready for files, media, backups, or ZimaOS apps
If you later want to use that drive for Windows storage
You can reformat it as NTFS or exFAT from Windows Disk Management – but only after wiping as above. Windows will see it as a “clean” uninitialized disk.
What if you accidentally wiped the wrong drive?
Since you’re already booted into ZimaOS on your new SSD, wiping the old one won’t affect your running OS. Just don’t run wipefs on your ZimaOS boot drive.
