[SOLVED] What handles 4TB?

[mprog]

Trying to install a 4TB storage device on a CentOS 5.2 machine.
Guess I need to use parted but can't figure out how to tell parted to use the max partition size.

Mike

[devils casper]

You can use GParted or PartedMagic LiveCDs for that. Both have Graphical Interface.
Or install GParted in CentOS.

[HROAdmin26]

You need to use a GPT/EFI table to support large volumes.

Google > Tutorial

[mprog]

Ya, I've been trying parted, reading about it, looking at documentation but I'm missing something. The raw total is around 4.3TB but I can't seem to find a way of finding out what size to enter as the secon entry to the starting/ending.

(parted) mkpart primary 0 4000G
(parted) print

Model: AMCC 9500S-12 DISK (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 4400GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 1801GB 1801GB primary

(parted) quit

This gave me a formatted/mounted size of;

/dev/sda1 3.6T 68M 3.4T 1% /shared

Close but, still wasting the rest of the storage and prefer not to have a second partition.

Mike

[coopstah13]

ext3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[mprog]

Can you just explain what you are telling me? Reading about ext3 is not helping me. When I use gpt as the label, I am not given the option to use ext3.

Do you mean when formatting?

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdx1

I can't recall if I used mkfs or the above now?

Anyhow, here's what I've done but now it's giving me different results.

(parted) mklabel gpt
Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sda will be destroyed and all data on this disk will be lost. Do you want
to continue?
Yes/No? yes
New disk label type? [msdos]?
(parted) mkpart primary 0 4300G
(parted) quit
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

# ./mkfs ext3 /dev/sda1
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
mkfs.ext2: invalid blocks count - /dev/sda1

Thanks.

Mike

[mprog]

Ah, ya, that was the error, not using the right mkfs version. Ya could have simply told me that .

Using mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1 gave me the rest of the storage and formatted it correctly.

Mike

[mprog]

So, how do I figure out how to use the max size of the storage then?

For example, I have 4399.8GB says fdisk.
So I used;
mkpart primary 0 4300G
but still end up with only;
/dev/sda1 3.9T 195M 3.7T

[coopstah13]

ext3 loses some disk space (5%ish?) from journaling, inodes, superblocks, etc, you will never get 100% with ext3, also by default when making filesystem it reserves 5% blocks for root user, you can disable with

tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sda1

[coopstah13]

this is a little old, but has some information, you can get more disk space out of it with different FS
Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch