How to Reinstall (Clean Install) Fedora 34 without losing data (/home)?

hi, i am new to linux,
I had successfully installed fedora 34 on my computer,
I had created this three partions on my harddisk
/boot/efi = 1024mb
/ = 50gb
/home = 830gb

Now i want to reinstall fedora 34, without losing my data on /home partition.

I am only using uefi boot & my harddisk is format by GPT.

HOW I CAN DO IT?
plz help

This is possible to do, however if I was you I would place my home directory on a separate drive than the boot and root partition. The reason for this is it will give you the flexibility to play and break the system without loosing your data. You can also try many different installs and still keep the same data.

You can of course do a re-installation, but you will find it a little difficult if you want to re-partition your drive, again not impossible, but you run the risk of loosing your data if you get it wrong.

As i said before, my /home directory is on separate partition.

I just want to reinstall fedora aka root partition

What’s the difficulty in doing that? Just don’t format /home during installation.

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To expand a little, use a custom partitioning scheme, and use the partitions you have exactly the way they were before. Reformat both / and /boot/efi, but do not reformat /home. This will give you a clean install but leave /home untouched. However, I’d recommend getting a backup of /home before you start, just to be safe.

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Then you can select a custom install, and select the partitions that you want to install too.
Make sure you don’t delete partitions, you will lose data if you do this.

Then you are just re-installing the root and boot partition.

Like I said if you’re new to linux you would be better server by backing up your home drive.
If you want to do a test run you could always throw a usb stick in and install your root and boot to there, then map your home.

While YMMV, I have reinstalled numerous times and never lost data in /home.

The way to do a reinstall since /home is a separate partition, is to do the custom install. You can select / and /boot to reformat and mount /home without reformatting it. It then installs with no issues for me.

Thanx for your reply,
I am trying to delete / root partition but cant able to delete it

In BLIVET GUI partitioning, i can able to delete /boot/efi partition and /home partition

But delete option is unclickable for / root partition

And i want to delete / root partition so i can able to install clean copy of fedora 34

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Plz tell me how do you reformat root partition

My root partition type is btrfs

I new to linux, your guidance can help me

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You don’t need to go into the blivet-gui interface. When the installer detects the partitioning layout, it asks you to choose the mount points and mark the partitions you want to reformat. So choose your mount points normally, but do not format /home (it should show up as the label you have given it: homeship), but choose to reformat the / partition (as per your label: rootship). You are making it more complicated than it actually is.

All this information is presented in the installer UI, if you read carefully, you won’t be lost. If some of the wording is unclear, then definitely you should ask here (preferably with screenshots).

EDIT: just to clarify, you need to go to the blivet-gui interface, iff you want to repartition your disk, but IIUC you are not, you just want to reformat it.

PS: If you feel more comfortable doing the reformatting yourself, then you could do it manually before you start the installer, and during installation just select the mount points and proceed.

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Thank you so so much

Problem is solved

Since windows 11 is not going to support my machine
I thought give linux a try
And i choose fedora mainly because gnome 40
And now i am loving linux
My pc is faster than ever before

Thank you :heavy_heart_exclamation:

2 Likes

Glad I could help.

… and that your love lasts long, I would think about a backup solution for your important data.

why ?

  1. it’s obvious
  2. years ago I had the same problem as you and addional a backup on an usb drive.
    alas I forgot to pull the usb-plug after the last backup before installation start.
    so maybe I was blind or something went wrong, but the backup drive was formated during installation and the internal disk too…

well, sorting ~20000 from a disk scratched files manually (same files were multiple and with various content) is a hard time …

in any case have a current backup on an external disk, before acting on partitions, etc…
Ever !
Cause nothing warrants that something could go wrong.
Nothing !

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Thanks for your kind concern

I will remember that, :blush:

You can’t reformat or delete the root partition when it’s mounted and you can’t unmount it while you’re using it. You’d have to boot from a live USB and reformat or delete it from that. Of course, that will make your system unbootable, so don’t do it unless you’re sure that’s what you want.

Linux is a development of Unix, BSD licence at Berkeley University starting in 1974 … interesting story. That’s the reason for many complicated setups about home partition today referring to limited hardware used before. I use one disk with one partition, the installer sets up EFI and boot partition as necessary. Backup is in the Cloud being a modern resource with no data loss if OS reinstalled, only local data on USB drive or copied to the Cloud … how much local data space? I don’t know as dynamic partition in local drive space between apps, data and system …

In Addition:
If you want to reuse Keyring and other encrypted data, you should also backup the Lines containing your username in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group and /etc/gshadow/

After reinstalling Fedora, don’t reboot, put the backed up lines back in those files on your target System. Now reboot - you’ll dropped on the login screen - use your known credentials. All encrypted files - for e.g. gnome keyring are intact. It feels just like before :smiling_face:.

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