Cant Partition HDD For Linux/ Android x86

Yes, you cannot have two separate bootable partitions on the same hard drive because the machine OS cannot determine which partition you want booted first and tries to boot both.

You must decide which partition to boot and access the other(s) from the operating menu. (Desktop)

First good answer when reading from the top down......

For a REALLY simple solution, someone might try the following method using this SATA power switch:-

4-channel-SATA-device-HDD-power-switch

That way, a major fault on one OS CANNOT disrupt another.......because it was switched off!!!

Adreasler seems to know a lot more than me but I'll make my comment anyway.

I have a WinDoze 7 laptop that was issued to me. It was an off-the-shelf WinDoze machine with Win 7 factory installed. I ran the Mint (13?) installer and partitions were broken up and GRUB set up with me only answering 7 or so easy questions. I don't actually know if WinDoze or Mint is/are "bootable" but from the user point of view GRUB starts the process and I can easily select what I want the machine to boot to.

You seem to have manually set up your partitions before trying to set up dual-boot. I don't recall having intentionally done that but since reinstalls ask me if I want to keep or overwrite old installs I would have thought what you are trying to do would have been easy.

I've gotten my experience in Dual-booting through many trials.

Well, most of them have not really been trials, Linux Mint, and before that Ubuntu Linux, are very easy to set up, they do all the heavy lifting on their own. It was this latest setup, setting up Windows 8.1 to 'play nice,' that has been all the aggravation. If I wanted it to act like two separate computers, that just took turns with the hardware, it would have been easy. Windows would not acknolage the existence of the Linux filesystem drives, Linux would not (could not) write to the Windows-locked partitions.

But I, fool that I am, thought that there should be a partition that both OSes could read and write to, so I could store all my important data there and access it from either OS, and that I could migrate my files from the old USB Plug-In External HDD I had been using as my data storage on the old system. THAT is where I learned of all the problems, since Windows 8.1 saw the USB HDD as an NTFS partition and started caching its headers. I spent weekends moving data over, only to discover that Windows had decided to 'roll the drive back' to the last time it saw it. Week after week, formatting, partitioning, reinstalling, again and again, like Sissifus and his boulder, until I finally stumbled on a forum that had the info about Win8.1 and its 'time-saving' hybrid-boot setup.

Microsoft SAYS they're going from Windows 8 straight to Windows 10 because software that chacks for platform compatibility would read Windows 9 with the filter 'Windows 9*' and assume it was Windows 95/98, but considering how much Windows 8 sucks, they have to skip windows 9 because it'll be so bad it'll bankrupt the entire company. Yes, even taking the Xbox down with it.

I agree. Windows 8 SUCKS!

It is worse than useless, it's frustrating, difficult to operate and the Ba$tard$ have disable some good features and made others too difficult to find/use be of any value.

Have you ever tried a hardware dual boot (as I just mentioned in another post here)?

I have no WinDoze 8.x experience (I sincerely believe what you wrote!), but that hardware may "fix" a lot of the problems you mentioned with mixing both Windows 8.x and Linux......as well as making it as good as impossible for one to accidentally affect the other.....as seems more than possible according to your excellent post.

Its also very simple for anyone (like me ) who likes a REALLY simple solution that works!

What do you think? One OS per hard disk (up to 4 OSs), used one at a time......

My system *IS* a classic 'dual boot' setup, Windows has its partition, Linux Mint has its partition, never the two shall meet.

Wat I was talking about was having a third partition (on a second physical drive) that both OSes could read and write to for data storage, so I could have, for example, my house maintenance notes on there and access it from either OS to read or make updates. It's really no different a concept than having your files on a floppy or thumb drive to carry from computer to computer to work on.

And the hardware dual-boot setup would still allow Windows 8.1 to 'foul up' the common drives used for data storage, unless you have the common drives use the FAT32 filesystem. FAT32 does not have the features Win8.1 needs to screw things up, unlike the more sophisticated NTFS.

Once my budget recovers ( New computer build + small remodeling/organization project that grew pretty big pretty fast = a lot more money spent than predicted ), I'll be looking at getting one of those Network Attached Storage units for holding data files. No matter what Windows tries, they cannot screw up a disk they can only access over Ethernet, since it's the computer on the other end of the cable that has control over how its disks are set up and operated. All Windows can do with that is make a request to store or retrieve a file, not "keep the whole disc marked as 'mid-write' so no other computer can use it" or "forget what you know is on the disk, here's the directory tree that last time I saw it, slam this on top without regards for how the files may have changed in the meantime."

I use Ubuntu on one laptop and Windows on a few more. I have a USB3.0 external hard disk, that I write and read to from WinXP, Win7 and Ubuntu 14.10, but not at the same time of course. (It is one of a set of 3 that has the same identical data for safety reasons, that I clone them on a special unit, off line of course!), I figure that one of three should still be working after almost anything!!

I find that truly separate hardware is a really good move and well worth the extra expense.

I have been doing it for years, though I have not used one of these SATA switches that I mentioned previously, but how can that be a problem as you say (assuming I understand what you said fully!) if only one OS/Hard disk is actually powered up at any one time.....one OS cannot interfere with another.....

Having so many partitions as you describe, with two bootable, sounds like a really possible way to have one OS overwrite another partition, maybe even the user may do it....accidentally of course..,,,

But to my mind, having the OS's each on another separate physical drive that is not even powered up at the same time as another, is far, far safer than what you propose with having 3 partitions on the same physical hard disk....!

Sorry to disagree....but each to his own!

until I finally stumbled on a forum

Care to share a link to the forum?

If I can find it again. I ran across it while throwing desperate queries at duckduckgo, so my meticulous note-taking was a bit impaired by my frustration at Windows:

It should be in the browser history ... of the computer I'm decommissioning. Well, I still need to boot it up again to get the user names and passwords off it, so I'll check the browser history at that time.

followup:

the error message wasnt accurate, since grub gives me the choice of Windows or Android x86 inspite of that error message