Partition Recommendation

[mumidadi]

Hey i got 250Gb hard disk and i am using windows XP.

C: 10 GBs
D: 80Gb
E: 40GB
F: 40Gb
G:52 GB
H:10gb ALL FREE
Rest is unpartioned space which i used for installing mint which lead to almost disaster . So please guide me through how to install mint with this partition setup.All are NTFS

[Husse]

How disaster?
Anyway when you come to the partitioning part of the install select manual partitioning
and create one partition about 10 GB for root (there's a drop down menu to do the selection of mount points as it's called) and the rest for home on a separate partition
Should be pretty straight forward
Use ext3 as file system - do not try to use fat or NTFS partitions for Linux - it won't work

[Zwopper]

How disaster?
Anyway when you come to the partitioning part of the install select manual partitioning
and create one partition about 10 GB for root (there's a drop down menu to do the selection of mount points as it's called) and the rest for home on a separate partition
Should be pretty straight forward
Use ext3 as file system - do not try to use fat or NTFS partitions for Linux - it won't work

Don't forget a SWAP partition for at least the size of your memory amount.

[Husse]

Thanks Zwopper - I forgot this is Newbie Questions

[mumidadi]

Well disaster was i installed the Mint and when it rebooted it gave me some Error 18 and then nothing was booting not even XP so i rebooted with live CD and dlted the swap and EXT3 partition with Mint installed and now its working as was working before(XP)........i was told that error is cause of BIOS DSNT support big hard drives with Dual Boot well something like that so but i remember using 2 windows not so long ago.... so thats why i was asking how to manage my partitions...Last 10GB drive is all free i can use it for Mint so i can make it like
2Gb swap
8GB ExT3

BUt selecting mount points is real Problem what mount points should i select?

[mumidadi]

OK i just tried again with Mint but now when i run the installation setup and progressed to the partition manager and selected manual.THe next windows which was supposed to show me Partitions wsnt showing me anything instead showed me this

/dev/sda



Its quite funny i thought all problems solutions known now i well make Installation thread after i am done with Installation but still i am stuck over Partitions

[Zwopper]

Last 10GB drive is all free i can use it for Mint so i can make it like
2Gb swap
8GB ExT3

BUt selecting mount points is real Problem what mount points should i select?

8GB EXT3 mountpoint /
2Gb SWP mountpoint will set itself to /swap
Make sure you tick the format box for the / (root) -partition

[atlef]

Screenshot--dev-sdb - GParted-1.png (62.16 KiB) Viewed 805 times

This is what mine looks like at the moment.

Screenshot--dev-sdb - GParted-1.png (62.16 KiB) Viewed 805 times

And this is my : "he whispered" Vista install. An install I've used the best part of the last SIX months to configure to my liking, and to make it run almost as smooth as xp used to. And it is possible.

atlef.

[mumidadi]

OK i am now installing with windows drive having its default mount point and Mint drive having \mount point and swap as it by default.......lets see how it goes

I just got finished with Mint installation I sue 10gb partition i converted 8gb into EXT3 and 2 gb for swap but now i am getting after rebooting

GRUB loading stage 1.5
GRUB loading, Please wait
Error 18

[Fred]

mumidadi,

Here is an exert that might help you.

Error 18

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS

This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB on others.). In more practical terms this means the BIOS is unable to start executing the kernel because the kernel is not located within the block it can access at boot up time.

This can be circumvented by creating a boot partition at the beginning of the disk that is completely within the first 1023 cylinders of the harddrive. This partition will contain the kernel.

The kernel itself does not suffer from the same limitations as the BIOS so after the BIOS has loaded the kernel the kernel will have no problem accessing the whole harddrive. Newer BIOSes will automatically translate the harddrives size in a way that it can be completely contained within the first 1023 cylinders and hence modern computers do not suffer from this problem.

The same error can happen when the BIOS detects a disk in a different way as Linux does. This can happen when changing motherboards or when moving a GRUB-bootable disk from one computer to another. If this happens, just boot with a GRUB floppy, read the C/H/S numbers from the existing partition table and manually edit the BIOS numbers to match.

The above was taken from the below url. if you want more information.

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB

Enjoy,

Fred

[Husse]

The size limitations should be fixed in newer hard and software - unless perhaps if you try to put grub in a partition "very deep" into the disk
BUT
I see two /home partitions one with NTFS
This does not work - you can have lots of /home partitions but only one mounted as home and you can't use ntfs in Linux partitions