Question Removing Windows 10 Pro OS from a secondary SSD (for storage)

[awkwerdz]

Greetings to all!

Context: My previous PC had an FX-6300 and a mechanical WD Blue 500GB 7,200 RPM HD.
I've built a new computer on the Ryzen platform: 2600 @ 4Ghz on 1.337v, with entirely different hardware, including a Crucial MX500 2.5" SSD.
Using the "Acronis software" provided with the SSD, I cloned the WDBlue's contents onto the new MX500.
I purchased an M.2 NVME Crucial P1 500GB for OS/priority, and using the same Acronis software, I cloned the contents of the MX500 onto the M.2 P1.

What I would like to do is completely remove the existing Windows OS on the MX500 SSD, while still keeping the rest of the data.
I have disconnected all drives except the NVME, and Windows boots without any issues.
Also, I do have a USB drive with Win.10 Pro on it, in case I need to repair files or install Windows onto a different drive.

Apologies for the sheer amount of context provided, but my question is this: is there any method available to remove Windows + OS-related files from my MX500 without a complete format?
I would like to remove the OS entirely from the SSD drive to clear up space, but still keeping all of my other data (secondary apps, documents, pictures, music, and videos).

Thank you for your time :jap:

 

[doolittle]

For some reason, when you boot both disks under Windows you can't remove the system partitions cleanly - I have done this plenty of times using the latest 19.04 version of Ubuntu live USB and running the GParted app, aka Gnome Partition Manager.

once you get it running, run gparted either by typing it in a terminal or searching for the app. First thing I would do is select the HDD, disable the boot flag, then remove all partitions except for the main NTFS partition (will be the largest one).

Once that's done, expand the NTFS parition to fill the entire drive.

Then mount the disk so the file manager can see it then delete the "Windows" directory, and you probably want to keep the "Users" profile directory to recover your old files if you need them.