Alright as the title states I am going to be soon run a dual boot set up with 7 and Mint 13. I do have a few questions If anyone could help me out. I decided to go with 64bit Mate (as Cinnamon seems to have a fair chunk of annoying issues), due to running 6GB of RAM.

1) I've read that 64bit can run 32bit applications when you have the libraries acquired, so how well on average do you find this works? (I know there are a few more work arounds but this is the most common one I've seen.)

2) I run two 1.5TB HDDs in a Raid0 array for storage of things such as my games, music, books (both free and my kobo backups), etc... I realize I'll probably have to tweak it so it recognizes the array but I'm curious if it will be problematic?

3) I know I will have to partition my OS drive to allow for Linux Mint, I read there was an automatic partitioning software as well as manual. How much space does it usually allot for Linux, and how reliable is it? OR would I be further ahead just to do it manually (though to confess it's been a while since I partitioned a drive.

Thank you for your time in reading this, and any answers to my questions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all...and I have used Linux in the past, and I've toyed with Mint however I've stuck primarily to using it in its LiveDVD format. :) Have a good day all.

System Specs:
Windows 7 Professional 64bit
i5-750 2.667 GHz Quad-Core CPU (later upgrading my MOBO and CPU to Ivy Bridge)
Biostar P55 Mobo
6GB of RAM (2 OCZ sticks and 1 Kingston) 1333MHz @ 7-7-7-20
EVGA GTX 560Ti nVidia
LG Blu-ray Burner
1 WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD
2 WD Caviar Black 1.5TB HDD (Raid0)
1000w Corsair modular PSU
Antec Lanboy Air Blue Modular Case

The only 32-bit applications I could think of running on my 64-bit system would be games. And I have a multilib system installed and don't have any problems getting games to run on it. I've been using 64-bit systems for years now and haven't had any issues.

Personally, I would never.ever let a program partition my hard drives automatically. Never. I know how I want my partitions to be laid out and I always do it manually. With such programs like GParted and its easy to understand GUI partitioning a hard drive in my opinion is a piece of cake really.

I usually use Parted Magic to prepare and set up hard drives and it has never let me down. Great live system.

A word of warning: Windows 7 can react ... Unpredictably to partitioning by 3rd party software. However, if you use built-in windows 7 partitioning tool (find Disk Management, shrink the volume you want to ... Well, shrink, and then install Mint on the newly created unallocated space. You should give it at the very least 7 GB of space. And yeah, Mint should already recognise and make use of any NTFS partitioned space.) Anyway, if you use Win7 parititioning tool, it'll set itself correctly, so you'll have no problems whatsoever. And for the love of god, do not automate the process. It's simple enough.

Whether it is problematic depends heavily on where the RAID0 is implemented.

If it is hardware/chipset level (i.e. RAID0 is started before your OS and your OS only ever sees the RAID0 and not the separate drives), it should at least work without any problems but you might not be able to report status. If it is software-level, I think it is pretty unlikely to work.

Unfortunately I only started using RAID after I fully switched over to Linux so I can't offer any personal experiences, just "theory".

Ah, I knew about the partitioning software with Win7, but the impression I got from a friend was that unless I did it during the Linux install it would cause problems. Good to know I can do it with 7 then install to the partition. Good to know I'm not that screwed. Well 7GB is easy enough, but I'd probably take 10GB just because I like even numbers for figuring things out in my head. Thank you for the advice, much appreciated. Unfortunately, the array was done within windows and is not recognized outside of Windows (though even after formatting my drive previously it remembered the array anyway :P). Maybe I should wait til I get a 2TB external HDD to back everything up and un-raid the drives before I attempt this. I just don't want to lose all my videos, books, etc...

But only for hibernation and when you want to suspend-to-disk. Otherwise, for a modern desktop system with a high amount of physical RAM, a swap partition is rarely needed.

On any system that has 1 GB or more of physical RAM installed I wouldn't waste more than 1 GB of space for a swap partition. Or better yet, simply use a swap file instead.

But of course, this depends as always entirely on (personal) preferences and on how to one plans to use his or her computer and what for.

woops double post

As far as my memory situation goes, I have 6GB of physical RAM, 1TB HDD, and 2 (which I need to de-raid) that are 1.5TB ea. HDDs. I am pretty much good in those departments.

I read somewhere your swap should be double your ram, but I thought 12000 seemed a little high. I don't really hibernate any computer I own, I generally leave it going or power it off. So 2000 would be more than enough for a swap or should I make it larger? I just want to make sure I don't end up f-disking and start over.

As for my raid0 array, I can unraid them but I need something to dump the data on it currently so I don't lose it. This will take me some time due to not having a big enough external atm.

It's been a long while since I used Linux, but a couple weeks ago I decided to install Linux Mint on my netbook, and now I'm considering a dual boot on my Win7 64 bit rig as well. So this thread is kind of timely for me.

Anyway, I believe with that much RAM, you don't need to worry about going double the value for your swap. I'd go with either an equal value (6 GB) or even lower. I think you'll be fine with that, but by all means wait for someone with better knowledge to confirm.

Awesome, glad to hear I created a thread others can make use of :). Yeah, that is the vibe I've been getting from what previous posters said. I will wait, but if I just need 6 or less GB for a swap I'll definitely do that.

I currently triple-boot XP, 7 (64 bit) and Mint (64 with Mate). I used Ubuntu from 6.06, but hated Unity so much that I switched to Mint with the last couple releases.

To avoid any partitioning problems, I partitioned my drive before installing the operating systems, and left my last partition as a logical partition for Mint (so I can't speak for NTFS resizing). Before messing with your partitions, back up everything (I like to use rsync) and your MBR (all 512 bytes) in case Windows freaks out. I have never used the automatic partitioning software, since the included software (gparted) on the LiveCD makes it very easy to do manually. I set XP to 10GB, 7 to 40 and the rest to Mint (I put all of my games and music on my larger hard drives). I always set my swap size equal to my RAM, which should be the minimum you use.

If you use ext4 and want to reclaim some space, you can use tune2fs to set the reserve space to 0. Also, the installer will give you the option to encrypt your home folder, which I highly recommend.

I'm pretty sure that in the newer releases, the MultiArch approach took care of all of the 32/64 bit messiness. I've never had an issue with it.

Raid support can be spotty, and I know that installing on Raid0 is messy (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installing_with_Fake_RAID). However, since it's not your OS drive it might be easier than that.

Since pretty much everything was already answered, I'll try to add something new and leave anything else out. Any modern OS (except those "consumer" versions of Windows 7 32-Bit) supports more than 3 GB in RAM nowadays, but there's probably no reason to use 32-Bit anyway. This depends on what you are trying to do. There's usually a 64-Bit version of any program available that's not totally outdated (and so you shouldn't have to play around with 32-Bit programs - anyone remember that Adobe Flash Plugin nightmare? ;-) ). If you are thinking about using "wine" and running 32-Bit Windows programs, you can simply do this. To make it short, yes you can run 32-Bit programs on your 64-Bit OS, but there's probably no reason to. Mint doesn't recognize it? Basically it's installing "mdadm", loading (modprobe raid0) that raid0 kernel module and mounting it with "mdadm". Said that, I'm not using Mint but Arch. It's up to you how you partition it. GParted is a great GUI. However *I* won't go below 20 GB for your root partition, simply because time will come and you will end up compiling your programs. Depends on how /tmp is configured on Mint (be it in RAM only or on disk) you will end up using a lot of space. Don't make your home partition to small, too. As was already said you don't need a big swap partition if you are not planning to use that for hibernation. Personally, I've never had any problems with my 2GB swap partition.

Now let's see if my text gets messed up as usual...

Thanks for the valuable intel and suggestions to you, and everyone else. From what has been said, I am pretty sure I can do this without any major annoying issues. As for 64bit, I tend to always go for a 64bit OS whenever possible as 32bit is not something I've used since Windows XP.

Yeah I figured later on about going about 25 or so gig for my root after reading that I would have to compile some stuff. I am curious what size is recommendable for the home partition, and that's re-assuring that I can get away with 2-3GB for a swap. So much helpful info, and stuff confirming what I thought :).

Yeah as for software anything I have backed up is on my raid0 drive but I want a 2TB external to back everything up to so I can wipe it and return it to two seperate 1.5TB drives to avoid any unnecessary headaches.

Well, I've successfully un-striped my raid drive back into two separate HDDs. I've decided I'm going to install Mint onto one of the 1.5TB drives rather than partitioning my W7 HDD. I know this will require going into BIOS to change the boot order to whatever HDD I'm deciding to boot from, but that doesn't seem THAT bothersome.

I mostly decided on this to avoid messing with my MBR, to avoid dealing with partitioning my Windows 7 HDD, and if I decide to update to a different distro or newer version of Mint avoid some headaches. I've never installed a dual boot to two separate HDDs before; I've read (but wish to confirm this) that I can format the Linux drive without it causing adverse issues (other than removing Linux) to my system by doing it this way, is this true?

Thank you for your time in reading this guys and gals. I just want to make sure I don't hose myself attempting this.