Linux Mint Install Fails (Because of Partitioning?)

Question

I bought a laptop with three drives: sda/sdb are a RAID array with windows installed, and sdc is a separate 1TB drive. While I wanted to install Linux Mint on sda/sdb (creating a new partition from its free space), that doesn't seem possible with the Mint installer, so instead I'm trying to install to sdc.

The problem is I can't get it to work. At first I tried the following partitions:

1. 100gb ext4
2. 100gb swap
3. 800gb ntfs (to share files between Linux and Windows)

That didn't work: the install failed near the end. So then I swapped the order of the partitions:

1. 100gb swap
2. 100gb ext4
3. 800gb ntfs

Now the install succeeds, but when Mint boots up I wind up with a black screen (even if I choose the failsafe boot).

I'm guessing the problem is my partitioning, since I've never had issues before on other computers when I let Linux Mint do the partitioning for me. So, my question is, what am I doing wrong? Do I need a boot partition? Some other type of partition? Different partition order or size?

I haven't done partitioning "by hand" in years and I really don't know what "the right" partitions should be, so any help would be appreciated.

EDIT

Using Xen2050's answer I was able to see the console output. The last part of it was:

...
* Starting enable remaining boot-time encrypted block devices
[   84.874610] INFO: rcu_sched detected stalls on CPU/tasks:

Then after a pause, there are repeated lines like this one:

task kworker/0:0:4 blocked for more than 120 seconds

Also I figured out that recovery mode actually did work, I just wasn't realizing it because of an unrelated monitor issue. So now I know that recovery mode works, but regular mode makes my kworker tasks get blocked and my cru_sched stall (whatever that means).

Is there any way to figure out what recovery mode is doing to fix things, and then apply that to the normal boot?

Answer 1

Does Mint give some regular startup messages or splash screen when trying now? (ESC should exit the splash screen & show messages, or remove the boot options quiet and `splash).

As in, is it finding the right partitions and starting to boot, then failing? Or is it not finding or trying to boot Mint at all?

"Failsafe" should add all the regulars like nomodeset which is a big one for "black screen"...

And any other monitors or video cards/ports? I've seen some Linuxes (Linuxii?) would pick a different port/plug than the one the monitor was in.

Booting the command line option text should get to a terminal, to at least see if the partitions and hopefully "basic" video/monitor settings are working. Then you'd know it's some other graphics/video setting that's being changed later, and can fix that.