How to partition over 2 tb with raid 5?

[IamOZ]

I have Five 1TB harddrive in raid5, but it seem like it only allow you to partition 2TB max? Anyone know how to partition all the available space? (3.7 TB) thank.

 

[IamOZ]

hmmm, seem like i figure it out, (just convert disk to GPT disk?) What differ does it make if its a gpt disk or mbr disk?

 

[LittleNemoNES]

ok - you got it.


No difference, IIRC

 

[taltamir]

GPT can only be read my newer operating systems.
Thus, if you were to format a single drive with GPT, and then put it into a computer containing an older OS that does not support it, (say, windows 2K), that computer will be unable to read it, and will think it is unformatted.

windows XP can use GPT for data, but cannot boot from it. There are a variety of other limitations depending on the exact version of windows you have:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/...e/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx

 

[RebateMonger]

Unless you absolutely have to have them, I'd recommend smaller partitions anyway. Disk maintenance operations (like Chkdsk or backups) take FOREVER on even a 1 TB array. If you can life with smaller partitions, I'd recommend it.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Ok, don't get me wrong, I'm not posting this to be a Microsoft basher just for political reasons.

But the thought of setting up a 5TB RAID array for consumer uses based on Microsoft OSs and commodity hardware just scares me.
Every time I've seen Microsoft 'scandisk' / chkdsk start 'correcting' drive errors even on a SINGLE drive it has been a MAJOR data catastrophe, totally opaque / uncontrollable as to what it is doing, and AFAIK it made things worse not better. This is with 300GB-1TB level of drives. IMHO their filesystem integrity and recovery checks, tools, and safeguards are questionable at best.

Now if you were running Server 2008 with intelligent hardware RAID cards and enterprise level 3rd party software and so on I'm sure you'd have great success. But IMHO there is a REASON that people typically DO buy intelligent 3rd party RAID cards to manage their RAID5s very often instead of doing it 'in the box' with soft-RAID.

Perhaps you'd be happier with a quality NAS or dedicated Solaris file server or something. I'd just wince at the possible data loss on a 5TB software RAID if you're not doing something SUPER common / standard with your configuration, hardware, sysadmin, and having a FULL offline backup.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Every time I've seen Microsoft 'scandisk' / chkdsk start 'correcting' drive errors even on a SINGLE drive it has been a MAJOR data catastrophe, totally opaque / uncontrollable as to what it is doing, and AFAIK it made things worse not better.

I agree with Chkdsk being scary. Its job is to make the FILE SYSTEM look correct. If there are deeper errors, it'll "fix things", but your files may disappear in the process.