Multi-Boot Question

[mbott001]

I have a Win10 desktop system that I'm thinking about setting up for both Win and Linux Mint. I've seen two methods of how this can be done. The "simple" one is just letting Linux Mint install itself side by side with Windows. The other method begins with shrinking the Windows partition on "C" and other tasks to prepare the new partition for Linux. Not being the sharpest crayon on the box, what's the difference? Why do I find competing ways of doing what I think is the same thing?

Been a Linux user for some time now, but this is the first time I've considered dual booting one of my Windows systems.

Thanks!

--
Mike

[rickNS]

Why do I find competing ways of doing what I think is the same thing?

There is almost always more than one way to skin a cat.

If win10 fills the drive, one way or another it will have to be shrunk. I think most agree that the best way to shrink windows is with windows.
For one and without getting into it too much, you might want (need) to disable page file to get any significant amount of shrinkage. (because windows wastes space putting stuff all over the place, like the page file)
just in case, here's a link for how to do that.
https://www.intowindows.com/how-to-dele ... indows-10/

You have read about fast boot, and how to turn it off, and disabling secure boot ? You also have to take care of those issues.

How big, and full is your drive currently ?

[mbott001]

How big, and full is your drive currently ?

Thanks for the reply.

Disk 0 (the "C" drive) has a capacity of 465.42GB and 89% free (415.07GB). Plan was to evenly split Disk 0 between Windows and Linux Mint. There is a 1TB disk (Disk1) that contains my music files (378.4GB) and a Disk 2 (500GB) that is 100% free.

This brings another question to mind. Will the dual boot still function if I can/decide to install Linux Mint on Disk 2? Would that be a bit less complicated?

Right now, Disk 0 is a solid state drive and Disks 1 & 2 are conventional HDs.

Installed RAM is 16GB.

--
Mike

[AndyMH]

I would put mint on the SSD for the performance, splitting the drive between win and mint. I would also follow rickNS's suggestion about using win's disk management tools to shrink your win partition (C:). When I'm installing mint dual boot, I always shrink the win C: partition in win. I then use gparted (the standard linux partition editor, there is a copy in the mint install iso) to add the ext4 partitions I want and install mint with the 'something else' option. Slightly more complicated than 'install alongside', but I get what I want rather than what the installer thinks.

If you need to switch off virtual memory in win (pagefile.sys), you can turn it back on after you have shrunk win C:. If you don't turn off fast boot, your ntfs partitions will be read-only to linux. I also turn off automatic updates in win (so if a win update - hasn't happened yet - is going to bork grub, I can make sure I have a backup before I start).

Do you happen to know if you are booting in UEFI or legacy mode?

[mbott001]

Legacy on that system.

--
Mike

[AndyMH]

Legacy on that system.

So probably an upgrade from win7 to win10. Think win10 uses up three primary partitions, MS reserved, win C: and recovery. You might get lucky and only find two. With a legacy (msdos) drive you can only have four primary partitions or three primary and one extended (you can put logical partitions in the extended partition - a 'fix' for the four primary partition limit). Mint will happily install into a logical partition.

I would definitely create your partitions with gparted and use 'something else' for install. There is a bug in the installer for LM20, it creates a useless EFI partition (and if you already have three primary partitions it will come unstuck). This applies to both 'erase and install' and 'install alongside':
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=326270&p=1855497&h ... l#p1855497

Any further questions, post the output of sudo parted --list*, it will tell us how your drives are partitioned.

* boot from your mint install media and open up a terminal.

[mbott001]

Code: Select all

mint@mint:~$ sudo parted --list
Model: ATA WDC WDBNCE5000P (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size   Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  368MB  367MB  primary  ntfs         boot
 2      368MB   500GB  500GB  primary  ntfs


Model: ATA WDC WD10EZEX-00B (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  primary  ntfs


Model: ATA WDC WD5000AAKX-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size   Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  500GB  500GB  primary  ntfs


Warning: The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but
Linux says it is 512 bytes.
Ignore/Cancel? i                                                          
Model: PNY USB 2.0 FD (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 62.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/512B
Partition Table: mac
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Name   Flags
 1      2048B  6143B   4096B                Apple
 2      324kB  4387kB  4063kB               EFI

[mbott001]

It's now a work in progress. I've:

- Disabled automatic win updates
- Disabled the page file
- Currently imaging the drive prior to shrinking "C" Clonezilla is your friend. I will actually make 2 images and I have a few 500GB HDs in the supply drawer.

Once the images are complete, I'll shrink the C drive by 1/2.

--
Mike

[AndyMH]

Ignore the warnings on sdd, just parted getting confused by your mint install stick.

You're lucky, win has only used two partitions, so you have two spare primary or one primary and one extended.

Personally, I would split sda (your ssd) 50/50 between win and mint, so shrink sda2 to give you around 250GB free space. I would then create two ext4 primary* partitions in the space created. One around 30-35GB for / and the remainder of the drive for /home. There are mixed views on whether to have a separate /home partition on the forum. I think they are a good idea. You could just go for a single ext4 partition for / (with /home just another folder within it). Your choice.

As you said your other 500GB drive (sdc) was empty, I would re-purpose this - reformat** sdc1 to ext4 and use it as a backup drive. When you format it, add a label (also add labels to your ntfs drives/partitions - sda2 and sdb1). Why - when mint mounts these partitions it will mount them in /media/you, if there is a label it will use it, e.g. /media/you/mylabel. If there is no label, it uses the partition UUID, e.g. /media/you/95cc8b9f-d95d-4bbb-918e-56f36856b1b6 = not user friendly.

Timeshift is installed by default, this takes care of your system (backs up everything except /home). All you have to do is point it at the ext4 partition you created on sdc. If this drive is internal, you can automate the process, e.g. run once a day. There are a range of other utilities to backup /home, I use backintime (can be installed from software manager), this just backs up /home, so complementary to timeshift.

* one caveat, if you go for separate / and /home partitions and think that at some time in the future you might want to create another partition on sda, then you must create one primary partition for / and then create an extended partition using the rest of the drive. You can then create a logical partition in the extended partition for /home. This way it makes it easy to create further (logical) partitions in the future. One of the drawbacks of a legacy drive compared to the more modern standard - GPT.

** second caveat, if you use gparted to create an ext4 partition, it is owned by root and read-only to you. Easy to fix, click on it in your file manager (to mount it) and in a terminal sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/you/mylabel (or whatever label you gave it), changes ownership to you. Alternatively, use the disks utility to format it and you don't have this problem.

[linux-rox]

Legacy on that system.

FYI, assuming you eventually re-enable Windows updates, be aware Windows will from time-to-time reclaim the MBR, bumping Grub and placing itself back in charge of boot. This is easy to fix, but usually a surprise the first time it happens. Some people use the Boot Repair app, already installed in the LM20 ISO, but I think it's faster and more reliable to fix the MBR manually. From a live session, takes only two commands:

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
sudo grub-install /dev/sda --boot-directory=/mnt/boot

For illustration, I've assumed your system partition will be sda3. If you end up putting it on a logical partition inside an extended partition, it probably will be sda5 and you would substitute that for sda3 in the first command.

Bookmark this post or copy the text to a file on your computer, so you have it for easy reference when the need arises.

[mbott001]

I appreciate all the assistance I received here. I've been wanting to get this homebrew running on Linux Mint for a while now. It's an i7-10700 cpu @ 2.90GHz. Currently running an older GeForce GTX 1050 on it, but that is subject to an upgrade in the near future.

Both Windows and Linux Mint appears to boot up just fine. Now it's just a matter of tweaking everything to what I'm used to.

Thanks again!

--
Mike