After Partitioning Mint install error: cannot install GRUB

[ceti]

1 - your drives are sda & sdb because they're SATA, not IDE
2 - as far as I know, your Windows must be in the first partition of your first drive (sda0,0), the Master Drive

Cheers

[Boo]

please post a the results of:

sudo fdisk -l

you can only have 4 primary partitions on a hard disk.
if you want more partitions you have to have an extended partition with logical partitions in it. so then you can only have 3 primary partitions and an extended partition with logical partitions.

sda etc is now the universal hard disk naming convention, so both sata and ide disks are called sda etc.

[Boo]

the swap partition counts but it can be a logical partition inside the extended partition.

I think i now see your problem.
did you tell the installer to put grub in the first partition instead of in the MBR?
the first partition is NTFS and grub will not go on there.

this is what that output tells me:
sda disk is one big windows partiton (78GB)
sdb disk has a windows partition (10GB), then a linux partition(10GB) (mint), then another windows partition (14GB) and last the swap partition (3.8GB).

the real question is how do you really want to setup your system?
and is there anything important (data) on sdb the second disk?
can we move the ntfs data around and re partition the disk?

a linux install only needs about a 4GB / partition and a swap partition that is at most 2x the amount of RAM you have.
if you install multiple linux's you only need one swap partition as they can all use the same one.

well that gives you more to think about.

[Boo]

so it looks like you have one of those MB's that lets you choose which HD to boot off.
this can cause lots of problems with linux.

if you can still boot xp on sdb1 (first partition of the second disk) I would leave it alone.
next using the live CD delete the other 3 partitions on the sdb (second disk).
next install mint.
at the partition stage do a manual partition.
select sdb disk.
create a new primary partition of 10GB for the / partition, format ext3.
create a new primary partition of 2xRAM for swap.(eg 1GB RAM = 2GB swap)
leave the rest of the space free as it can be partitioned later as an extended partition. you could do this using gparted once installed or with the installer of another linux you want to install.

the last step of the install gives you a summary and the chance to change where grub is installed. it will install grub to the MBR of sda (hd0), let it do that. Now when you reboot let the system boot normally ie off the first hard disk.

the grub boot screen (may have to hit esc to see) should list:
linux mint ...
linux mint recovery...
memcheck...
other OS's
xp on first disk...
xp on second disk...

by default it will choose mint, using the arrows you can choose one of the other OS's.

[linuxviolin]

create a new primary partition of 2xRAM for swap.(eg 1GB RAM = 2GB swap)

2x yes if less than 1 GB RAM but with 1 GB or more 1x is largely enough. (with 2 GB RAM 1 GB swap can be completely sufficient)

[Boo]

no linux will not automatically use a newly created /home partition.
there is a guide in the wiki for moving your /home directory to an new /home partition.
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _partition

give it a go.

be careful if you want to share he /home partition between more than one linux os, especially if they both use DE such as gnome. they will both use the same gnome layout which may not be the one you wanted.

[Boo]

4GB gives you a bit less than 1GB to expand your apps and data.
it is a minimal size.
the KDE mint uses up more space than the gnome mint so you would have less than 500MB to expand apps and data.

so depending on how you want to setup your partitions and how you want to use your linux depends on how big you make the / partition. of course the bigger the disks you have the less of a problem partition size becomes.

I use small / partitions for trial/test installs and no /home. but for my main system i use multiple partitions that are bigger.
my laptop currently has about 5 OS's on it all chopped up into 4GB / partitions.

[Boo]

the answer is maybe...

you can only resize a partition from its end not from the start.
so that means you have to have space free after the partition you want to expand.
you can not expand a primary partition into a extended partition or across disks.

you have to be careful how you set up your initial partitions.

what you may want to do is partition a disk like this
primary XP
primary swap
extended
logical linux / (main linux)
free space

so you can add other linux in logical partitions if you want or extend your original main linux.
but remember if you add another linux after your main one you will have to delete it and the partition before extending the main one.

this is a simplified way to do what you want.

[Boo]

yes the extended partitioning is really for having more than 4 partitions and it may make it easier when you decide to extend partitions.

your layout sounds ok.
but i would still use the extended partition, it is future proofing.