The 640KB limit was passed in the 80′s, not the 90′s. Wrong Decade. We had 386 SX processors in 1985. Heck even the 486 came out in 1989.

A simple installation of Ubuntu or Mint has a program called Disk Utility
allows you to format a 2tb drive as Ext 4 and it to be recognized as a Linux drive. easy as

In short, you need to know the pros and cons and decide for yourself what risks are worth what benefits.

I told you that so I can ask this: using the scenario as Mr. Unrein’s here, I want to extend the space on my MSA which uses sata drives connected to a Compaq Array controller 642.. On a different array controller, a 5300 series controller from Compaq are SCSI disks. I created 1 logical disk, raid 5. In the disk management console I converted the disk to dynamic. What issues does anyone see with extending the volume on to this dissimilar hardware?

Point taken and assimilated…

Thank you Carlton Bale for your efforts.

Cheers.

I used the general Windows GPT with a slight twist, since I wanted two partitions, one for system/OS other for data, on a single large RAID6 set using a Promise Fastrak hardware RAID card. So, I made one RAID6 volume of 100GB and a second RAID6 volume (both striped across the same set of 6 x 2TB disks) of the remaining 7.9TB. This way the OS sees two seperate logical disks – one partitioned as MBR for the OS boot, the other converted to GPT for a larger data disk.

Originally, I setup one large RAID volume, but as soon as I created the first OS-level partition for the OS installation on the logical drive, I could not find any way to make the remaining space a GPT partition.

BTW…
Davinci: The other 6,692,030,276 entities inhabiting this planet are not here specifically to provide for your needs. It might be nice to thank someone who takes the time and effort to write out even “part” of what you wanted to know.

That is correct. After created 2 logical disk drives in your RAID controller one with 80GB the other with the rest of the space you can open up disk manager you will see your 80GB DRIVE (not a partition) for the OS. Below that will be another DRIVE split into 2 partitions, one is 2TB the other is the rest of the space. Right Click the *text* “Disk 1″ and select “Convert to GPT” and the split will disappear.

Then format or partition as you normally would.

Easy as pie but some have to make it SOOOOO complex.

Basically, I want to create a partition with something like 80GB for Windows 7 x64 with RAID 10 spanning 4 1TB disks. Leave the rest of unparititioned volume alone for now. Then, in the operating system, I want to partition the other volume to GPT. In doing so, I should have 2.6TB of RAID 5.

Is this correct?

How hard is it to say to enable GPT you need to create 2 drives on your raid controller one to store the OS and the other for data as the OS can not be easily installed on a GPT drive. Once you installed Windows run diskpart or use the windows computer management, select “disk management” then right click the section that says “drive 1″ and select “Convert to GPT Disk”.

Then Boom you have you 16TB drive all in one place like you wanted.

Glad you found this useful and thanks for the feedback.

Oh, btw… with your kind words, and a gentle nudge in the right direction, I was able to find the research I needed to help me build out 24Tb. Quite nice, but I am now looking into a better backup system. =p

I respond to questions; this is apparent from the comments on this post. If you have a question or suggestion, please post it. If you want to complain about the information I provide for no other reason than to help others, please don’t.

This post explains that you need GPT to access volumes over 2 TB in Windows. If you want to know “how to format GPT” then, click the link at the end of the GPT paragraph for “Read this Microsoft TechNet article for more details on GPT.” It explains GPT, mentions diskpart, and links to pages explaining how to use it as well as the Disk Management Console. I provided the link with the information you needed at the end of paragraph you were referencing.

This post is not intended to be an instructional on how to use Windows, how to configure specific RAID controllers, or how to use software RAID within Linux. All of those topics are mentioned and each would warrant a unique post to even start to explore them. Microsoft Technet does a great job of documenting Windows; I see no need to reproduce that when I can simply link to it instead.

I understood everything that was written in this info/blog.

It’s provided detailed information on what I want just not how to accomplish it.

Please explain to me the logic of explaining what someone wants but not explaining how to accomplish it.

The program name that was left out was diskpart.

Know how hard would it been for the author to say “use Diskpart in Windows to create a GPT”.

He did not even need to explain how to use it as it gave the reader a chance to do another search and learn the application.

It took me forever to find that small piece of information because everyone assumed that everyone knows that diskpart will create a GPT.

Hopefully someone searching and finds this blog will not be left in the dark like I was.