Re: 2.4TB disk - MBR and GPT coexist?

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:56:43 -0800 Jo Rhett <jrhett@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for the reply. The problem is that I have a single 6-drive
(550gb/ea) RAID-5 array. If I split two disks off to make a RAID-1
boot device, I'll lose 1TB of usable storage.

On Jan 11, 2007, at 3:55 PM, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
Hmm, why can't you just make your controller create two logical arrays
onto the one physical array? Doesnt the controller support this feature?

Not any one that I've ever seen in commodity disks. Yes, on big fiber channel disk cabinets. No to 6-8 drive raid controllers.

Since we're going to be stuck with old BIOSes for a long time after
2TB is a cheap disk drive at [store], is anyone considering doing
the work to make GPT co-exist with an MBR block? It seems like the
obvious and sensible choice. You boot from the MBR partition, and
then load the GPT module and access the remaining data after that...

Is there a reason why we can't have a boot loader that boots off a GPT
disk? Or is the problem with the bios?

My understanding is that BIOS expects 32-bit partition sizes. So we must have a 32-bit MBR partition for the BIOS to boot from.

I'm just wondering what it will take to make GPT (which in theory can co-exist with MBR) work for the remainder of the drive?

--
Jo Rhett
senior geek
Silicon Valley Colocation




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