UEFI Big Drive question

[Stephen Morris]

Hi,
     As I understand hard disk processes in order to use hard disks 
bigger than 2TB in a single partition you must format those hard disks 
using a GPT partition table. From what I have read the traditional DOS 
partition table is only capable of addressing up to 2TB, and GPT  was 
developed to overcome this limitation. The one limitation with GPT as I 
understand it is that in order to use GPT you must also have UEFI active 
in the Bios.
     From experience I have also found that you can't install the 
windows system partition on a GPT device and I thought I read somewhere 
that you also can't put Linux /boot on GPT either.

regards,
steve

On 05/09/2014 06:39 AM, CS_DBA wrote:
>
> On 05/08/2014 12:28 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> On May 6, 2014, at 6:18 PM, CS_DBA <cs_dba at consistentstate.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all;
>>>
>>> we've just ordered a new server 
>>> (http://www.spectrumservers.com/ssproducts/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=26&idproduct=787)
>>>
>>> Originally I tried to simply upgrade an older server with more drive 
>>> space, I installed 6 4TB drives and did a new OS install but the OS 
>>> would not allow me to configure more than 2TB per drive.
>> I don't know what this is referring to when you say "the OS would not 
>> allow". The kernel has no problem with 2.2+TB drives. Do you mean the 
>> installer? Or some utility? What utility?
>>
>> If the drives do not have a partition map at all, anaconda (the 
>> installer) will use GPT on 2.2+TB drives. So long as the BIOS doesn't 
>> puke on GPT (some of them do), and can at least load GRUB2 from that 
>> point on it will work as GRUB2 supports GPT, so does the kernel, and 
>> thus you can use big drives as boot drives.
>>
>> If the BIOS pukes on GPT, the alternatives to buying a new computer 
>> is to use a smaller drive for booting, but then use the big drives as 
>> data drives, using either GPT to partition them, or no partition map 
>> at all. You can directly use mdadm or lvm (pvcreate) or Btrfs on an 
>> unpartitioned drive.
>>
>>
>>> Subsequent research leads me to conclude that if the bios supports 
>>> UEFI and the installer boots as such then the installer should see 
>>> 4TB drives without any issues. I'm also assuming that any server I 
>>> order today (i.e. a more modern server) should ship with UEFI 
>>> support in the bios.
>> Not necessarily, although they are now a lot more common than they 
>> were even a year ago.
>>> Are my conclusions above per UEFI correct?
>> Yes although I'm not sure you need a new computer to fix this problem.
>
> Agreed, we didn't order the new server to fix this issue, we ordered 
> the server to upgrade another older server. However I wanted to 
> address this issue at the same time...
>
>
>>
>> Chris Murphy
>>
>

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