Installing Mint in partitions......again!

[littlerob]

Hello all. I'm new to this, so please be gentle.

I've recently bought a new pc, and when I specced it I asked for the hard drive to be split into 2 equal (250gb) partitions. Both of these are visible in Windows Explorer as NTFS drives (c: and d: respectively), and I want to install Mint 11 (64bit) into the d partition. I've downloaded the ISO file and can run the OS from the disc no problem. My problem is when I come to install the OS. I want to be able to dual boot into either Windows 7 or Mint 11, but if I select the option to install Mint alongside Windows it tries to do this by splitting the 250gb partition that is currently the 'Windows' one, and totally ignores the other partition that's available. I've seen advice and guides on t'interweb that talk about creating /boot, Swap, / and /home partitions, but to be honest I'm not that confident I'm doing the right thing, and I don't want to screw up Windows. If this is the solution, could someone suggest what sort of sizes each of these partitions should be (I've got 8gb of RAM). My one worry with using the d partition is that there seems to be a couple of important files in there that I'm not sure what they are for - one is a windows installer package, another is an external installer application, and there are a few other bits in there including .dll files. No idea what these are for, but there is only 3.8mb worth of files. I've backed these up onto a usb stick, so I can recover them if needed.

Would I be better off increasing the size of the c drive as big as it can go (and reducing the d partition as small as it can go), and installing Mint next to Windows that way?

I guess this is one of those noob questions that gets asked loads of times, but some simple instructions would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[lmintnewb]

Some babblings ...

See the links I posted on my 1st post to that thread. Also couldn't hurt reading what others had to say, it's related to what you're after, dual booting Mint w windows.
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=87867&p=507019#p507019

Imo ... no you don't need 4 million partitions, esp starting out me thinks. Keep it simple a root partition / and a swap partition. I still do that, keep everything for a Linux OS on one partition. Not a /boot, /, /home /23 others ... you can explore and figure out some complicated partitioning scheme or shared partitions or whatever later on easily enough.

Some precautions I think someone should take before dual booting gnu/Linux w windows. Defrag all the windows partitions and dskchk them ahead of time. Boot time defragging is mucho better. Don't know if whatever M$ product you're using native utils will do boot time defrag or not. If they don't there's plenty of freeware out there that takes up where M$ as usual leaves it's users stuck out. The one I use is called Puran defrag free edition.

Got it from snapfiles.com, they have a ton of great windows freeware. Note that I haven't used Puran with anything but XP, which it runs circles around what came with XP by default. Just saying cannot attest to it working great on any other M$ OS's, know it does on XP though.

Couldn't hurt doing it again afterwards too. ( defrag + dskchk) Just to be cautious. Also tend to advise using windows own disk util to shrink a partition and free up space if possible. Though gparted live or the opensource disk util I've come to like called Parted Magic, can do it too. ( it has gparted live included as one of the tools on it.)

Just something I advise, am from the better safe than sorry school of thought when it comes to M$ products.

That problem partition you have with 3.8mbs on a huge partition. Honestly don't know what that is or why any oem would do summin like that. Did I mention the only M$ OS I've done gnu/Linux and windows with so far is XP ? Actually am fond of XP, even though am repulsed and disgusted by M$.

Have told ya I don't know what purpose those files serve. Having said that ... do have a thought on it. Ya could defrag the drive as above. Then resize that partition and leave it at 100mbs or so. Kind of blows to have a 100mb partition with only 3.8mbs of mystery files using up one of your primary partitions. But would leave you a nice chunk of free space to install Mint and make a swap partition in. While still leaving the mystery partition and it's contents alone.

2 cents.

[sunewbie]

Hello all. I'm new to this, so please be gentle.

I've recently bought a new pc, and when I specced it I asked for the hard drive to be split into 2 equal (250gb) partitions. Both of these are visible in Windows Explorer as NTFS drives (c: and d: respectively), and I want to install Mint 11 (64bit) into the d partition.
.
.
.

Hello,

In case you select dual boot, you do not have choice to where do you want to install linux. So Mint will select the partition (which is mostly the largest partition). and install automatically. Generally nothing happens to windoz and data and you have both windoz and Mint running. GRUB, the bootloader automatically detects any other OSes, including windowz and lists them in the GRUB Menu

Would I be better off increasing the size of the c drive as big as it can go (and reducing the d partition as small as it can go), and installing Mint next to Windows that way?

It would not be of any harm to do so if you decide to go for dual boot.

Manual install is better. It gives you more control.

Regarding the second partition, you can shrink or resize the partition, big enough to contain the already existing files during manual install and create another partitions.

The best way to do so is to install a software called virtualbox (`95 mb) in windows. Then try a manual install of Linux Mint inside virtualbox.

I strongly recommend you to try any Linux Distro inside Virtualbox before going for Dual boot.
After you are confident, you can go for manual install.

I have replied to a post on manual install
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=87912&p=507272#p507239
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=86245&hilit=+manual+install#p498430

This link can be helpful
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/index.html

Regarding the partition sizes

/root = 10 - 50 GB (keep atleast 20 GB) - i have kept 50 GB on 320 GB HDD
/swap = 2x times that of RAM in your case I think 2 GB (check this link - viewtopic.php?f=90&t=11872 ). Generally swap partition is used only when there is too much load on RAM. since you have enough RAM 8 GB, I think 1 GB swap should be enough
/home = 20 - 50 GB - this stores all data.

In your case for dual boot

you need to prefer to create an extra NTFS partition for common data / music files, common to both Windoz and Mint.

Edit: added more info

[littlerob]

Cheers guys. Seeing as I've got the original Windows disk if it all goes pear shaped, I think I'll delete the 4mb of files in the d partition and have a stab at the manual partitioning route.

Thanks

[littlerob]

Oh well. That's buggered it!

Deleted the files in the 'd' drive in Windows 7 (previously created hard drive partition in Windows). This drive then became referenced as 'unallocated'. Ran the Linux Mint install disc and clicked on the install icon on the desktop. Got to the bit where I was asked if I wanted to install next to another OS, overwrite Windows or do something else. Clicked on the install next to another OS, and was expecting an option to select the partition size etc. Surprise!!!! It went straight into installing the OS. Thought it was strange it only took about 5 minutes to do this, but it seemed to work. Restarted the PC, and I get the GRUB menu. Selected Linux Mint 11 and then get the splash screen (albeit the linux mint 11 logo/text seems to have been zoomed in on). But then the system stops loading and nothing more happens.

According to Gparted I now have 2 ntfs partitions (/dev/sda1 and 2 respectively) and an extended /dev/sda3 partition on the hard drive. This extended partition seems to contain the ext4 and linux swap partitions as sub-folders (is this possible?). These are labelled as /dev/sda5 and 6 respectively and have sizes of 213 and 8gb respectively.

I'm running an NVIDIA graphics card, and when I ran the OS via the disk I had to interrupt the loading and replace the text 'quiet splash' with 'nomodeset acpi=off'. I don't seem to be able to interrupt the boot process from the hard drive to change the text in the same way. Has this got something to do with the loading problem?

Anyone in the community got any ideas what's going on, and more importantly, how to resolve it?

Help and advice always welcome

[sunewbie]

Oh well. That's buggered it!

Deleted the files in the 'd' drive in Windows 7 (previously created hard drive partition in Windows). This drive then became referenced as 'unallocated'. Ran the Linux Mint install disc and clicked on the install icon on the desktop. Got to the bit where I was asked if I wanted to install next to another OS, overwrite Windows or do something else. Clicked on the install next to another OS, and was expecting an option to select the partition size etc. Surprise!!!! It went straight into installing the OS. Thought it was strange it only took about 5 minutes to do this, but it seemed to work. Restarted the PC, and I get the GRUB menu. Selected Linux Mint 11 and then get the splash screen (albeit the linux mint 11 logo/text seems to have been zoomed in on). But then the system stops loading and nothing more happens.

According to Gparted I now have 2 ntfs partitions (/dev/sda1 and 2 respectively) and an extended /dev/sda3 partition on the hard drive. This extended partition seems to contain the ext4 and linux swap partitions as sub-folders (is this possible?). These are labelled as /dev/sda5 and 6 respectively and have sizes of 213 and 8gb respectively.

I'm running an NVIDIA graphics card, and when I ran the OS via the disk I had to interrupt the loading and replace the text 'quiet splash' with 'nomodeset acpi=off'. I don't seem to be able to interrupt the boot process from the hard drive to change the text in the same way. Has this got something to do with the loading problem?

Anyone in the community got any ideas what's going on, and more importantly, how to resolve it?

Help and advice always welcome

that D drive, which you deleted was a recovery partition which windows 7 automatically creates. This helps in one touch recovery.

windows also has shrink partition option, which takes 2 minutes to shrink c: into nearly equal 2 parts. So you will have 3 drives.

I suggest, that you create partitions D: and restore the original files.

c:, e: (newly created), d: (recovery partition)

You cannot have more than four primary partitions.

In this case you had 2 primary partitions. You had deleted one partition. So installer created an extended partition and hence created other partitions inside extended partitions. You had selected dual boot option and so installer went ahead and created partitions automatically.

Having extended partition is normal and those sdaX numbers are also ok.

you should have selected the third option.

A fresh install is easier than troubleshooting.

I have a copy of Mint 9. Installer is not much different. So, I will try to install in virtualbox, and see if i can get screen shots. I can only have linux installed as the only operating system. But since you are doing manual partition, it would not matter much.

[lmintnewb]

Junk like this is why I suggested leaving the d: partition alone. Didn't want to try to identify and sort out what purpose it serves. Though googling PC model +relevant files is likely what I'd have done if faced with a situation like that. Or would've gone w what I'd described above. Only ever done gnu/nix and xp, things change and diff this or that with whatever os someone is dealing with.

Generally thought win7, routinely comes with 2 paritions, 100mb one and the rest. There are how to's that'll show someone how to eliminate that ridiculous 100mb partition and incorporate it into the rest. One of the things I file under the isn't M$ and the deals they cut with oem's craptastic file. Makes no sense to me a lot of the bs they opt for on people's comps. This one is my gf's ... some oem dorkwad decided to partition it with a recovery partition ( 5gb) and then install the OS in all of a 14gbs partition, leaving the rest unallocated for who knows what purpose. On a 110gb drive, me thinks that doesn't make much sense.

Just more stoopid junk they come up with to befuddle the avg PC user and keep em tied to M$. My dislike for M$ is a well documented fact by now.

Though am myself befuddled atm. What's the definition of an alcoholic ? A person with a glass of white and red wine sitting in front of them =lmintnewb atm. As long as you can backup any important data from win7 and have the install disks for it. Another ploy they're using to discourage people from using better AND free software ( not including a reinstall disc for people, should come with it imo ... PERIOD. This can be sorted out ... just a matter of how much headache and bs you have to go through. And on the other side of things, this is why I don't particularly care for automagically installing anything. Rather do it manually and keep as much control over what happens as poss to avoid unwanted borkage.

[sunewbie]

I found a screen shot for windows from ubuntu forums You need to login to see screen shots of partitions

here it is.



this is with swap partition, but for single OS LMDE XFCE. /boot partition is not necessary, but you can create it. I do not know much about /boot mount point. SWAP partition is to be selected from partition type drop down menu (e.g. ext4) and not from mount point which has / , /home, etc). After it is selected, all other options will be disabled.



You cannot have more than 4 primary partitions, so you will have to create big extended partition or logical partition. Inside this partition, you can have as many partitions as you want.

If you browse this thread, there are links to other threads, which give you some more screenshots.

Hope this helps

--------------

Even though this is for tripe boot, this excerpt can help you

desperado665
November 1st, 2009, 07:41 PM

I currently quad boot windows 7 (requires 2 primary partitons), Ubuntu 9.10, Mint 7 kde, Mint 7 Gnome and I also have a data partition that I save all my data to.

Starting with a clean 500GB hard drive, I first installed Win7 (windows 7 requires the first 2 primary partitons on your hard drive) and allotted 60GB for it.

Next I installed Mint KDE. Manually set up a 2gb swap (primary) partition, then allocated the remainder of my drive as an extended partition. Within the extended partition, set up how ever many 20gb logical drives as you want distros, these will be mounted as your / for each distro you install (in my case 3). Then I set up a logical drive of 100GB for a combined /home partition. In this case you MUST have different logon names for each distro. Also you MUST NOT format your /home partition after the first install.

Then I installed Mint gnome by setting the second (sda7) extended 20gb drive as / and set /home (sda9) without formatting.

I installed Karmic last to take benefit of grub2 by setting / to (sda8 ) and home to (sda9) without formatting.

So far, I have not had any problems at all booting into any OS at my choosing. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Added quote

[littlerob]

OK, so I looked around on youtube and on this forum, and managed to get the pc back to square one - i.e exactly how it was before I tried to install Mint first time around (including restoring the MBR to how it was) . I think what I'll do is minimise the size of the d drive and have another stab at creating the partitions manually using gparted. Gotta admit though, when i put mint 11 on my old desktop (windows xp, no partitions other than for Windows itself) I don't recall it being this involved. I think all I did was tell it to install mint alongside XP and it just sort of did it no problems.

I really wanna get mint to work as it's far more efficient and user friendly than MS. If only itunes could work reliably in linux I would simply overwrite the entire hard drive with mint and abandon MS forever!!

Thanks for all your help guys.

[sunewbie]

OK, so I looked around on youtube and on this forum, and managed to get the pc back to square one - i.e exactly how it was before I tried to install Mint first time around (including restoring the MBR to how it was) . I think what I'll do is minimise the size of the d drive and have another stab at creating the partitions manually using gparted. Gotta admit though, when i put mint 11 on my old desktop (windows xp, no partitions other than for Windows itself) I don't recall it being this involved. I think all I did was tell it to install mint alongside XP and it just sort of did it no problems.

I really wanna get mint to work as it's far more efficient and user friendly than MS. If only itunes could work reliably in linux I would simply overwrite the entire hard drive with mint and abandon MS forever!!

Thanks for all your help guys.

Glad to know that you managed to get back to original config of windows. There are alternatives available for itunes. rhythmbox player is known to sync with ipod. just google for it and try them.

I think what I'll do is minimise the size of the d drive and have another stab at creating the partitions manually using gparted.

If the size is not too big. Just leave that partition. If you want to shrink it, leave atleast 1 GB empty space.

Regarding installation, I also did the same thing. Generally, the dual boot option, which you selected, works well.

That unallocated partition, does not make any difference to Linux. You can always reformat it later to whatever partition you like. In fact many distro-hoppers, which use 4 -5 Linux Distros, keep / leave some space 20 - 30 GB space unallocated for future distros. Since the space is unallocated i.e. there is no file system. This space is dead and no data can be saved on this part. They just want to reserve this space for next distro.

The reason for which I suggested you to go for 'Something Else' i.e. manual install is due to the fact that, after spending some time with Mint, you may want to try another OS or upgrade Mint to a newer version. In my case, I dual booted Ubuntu 9.1 with XP and then I could not get XP to boot, though XP was installed, Grub did not boot it. So I tried to Repair Ubuntu and in process installed another Ubuntu. - Total Mess. To add to it, I have 2 HDDs. So it is better to go for manual install. This will help you in future.

To gain confidence in booting, I suggested you to try to install Mint inside virtualbox . Still if you are confident, you can go for manual install. It is left to you.

I will suggest you one thing. You had a problem with nvidia graphic card

I'm running an NVIDIA graphics card, and when I ran the OS via the disk I had to interrupt the loading and replace the text 'quiet splash' with 'nomodeset acpi=off'. I don't seem to be able to interrupt the boot process from the hard drive to change the text in the same way. Has this got something to do with the loading problem?

Kernel 3.0.4 had some issues with NVidia graphic cards. I do not know which is the default kernel for Mint 11, but the chances are slim that it will have Kernel V 3.0 or above. It should have Version 2.6.35 or above. Each kernel handles hardware differently.

BEFORE trying for another fresh install, please post this problem in the Newbie Section. This will help you solve the problem. Do not post it here. Since this thread has got many replies, some people may skip this thread. It is better to post it as a new thread in the Newbie Section.

Also mention card model no and laptop model no.

via Disk - you mean LIVE DVD right?

--------------

Apart from the official guide, here is another guide. Very useful and informative.

Beginners Guide to Installing and Using Linux Mint

It is updated for LM 11

[sunewbie]

here is an info on how can you shrink windows 7 partitions

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26 ... hrink.html
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... ows-vista/

I googled for 'what is the extra partition for in windows 7'

This partition has MBR. It has boot loader. So you can shrink it, but not delete it. After you install Mint, GRUB will take over from windows boot loader

these were the results

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 33aa6dae55

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... f9333ecb48

Hope this helps.