Create a GPT partition table and format with a large volume (solved)

Rolinh · 2013-08-15 15:15:35

Hello,

I'm having trouble creating a GPT partition table for a large volume (~6T). It is a RAID 5 (hardware) with 3 hard disk drives having a size of 3T each (thus the resulting 6T volume).
I tried creating a GPT partition table with gdisk but it just fails at creating it, stopping here (I've let it run for like 3 hours...):

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/md126.

I also tried with parted but I get the same result. Out of luck, I created a GPT partition table from Windows 7 and 2 NTFS partitions (15G and the rest of space for the other) and it worked just fine. I then tried to format the 15G partition as ext4 but, as for gdisk, mkfs.ext4 will just never stop.

Some information:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 256.1 GB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xd9a6c0f5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048   104861695    52429824   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       104861696   466567167   180852736   83  Linux
/dev/sda3       466567168   500117503    16775168   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1  4294967295  2147483647+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

Disk /dev/sdc: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/sdd: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1               1  4294967295  2147483647+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

Disk /dev/sde: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes, 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x5ffb31fc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1   *        2048   625139711   312568832    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/md126: 6001.1 GB, 6001143054336 bytes, 11720982528 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 65536 bytes / 131072 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/md126p1               1  4294967295  2147483647+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
WARNING: fdisk GPT support is currently new, and therefore in an experimental phase. Use at your own discretion.

gdisk -l on my RAID volume (/dev/md126):

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.7

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/md126: 11720982528 sectors, 5.5 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 8E7D03F1-8C3A-4FE6-B7BA-502D168E87D1
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 11720982494
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 6077 sectors (3.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              34          262177   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved part
   2          264192        33032191   15.6 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   3        33032192     11720978431   5.4 TiB     0700  Basic data partition

To make things clear: sda is an SSD on which Archlinux has been freshly installed (sda1 for root, sda2 for home, sda3 for swap), sde is a hard disk drive having Windows 7 installed on it. My goal with the 15G partition is to format it so I can mount /var on the HDD rather than on the SSD. The large volume will be for storage.

So if anyone has any suggestion that would help me out with this, I'd be glad to read.

Cheers

Last edited by Rolinh (2013-08-16 11:16:21)

Rolinh · 2013-08-16 11:15:58

Well, I finally decided to use a software RAID as I will not share this partition with Windows anyway and it seems a better choice than the fake RAID.
Therefore, I used the mdadm utility to create my RAID 5:

# mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1
# mkfs.ext4 -v -m .1 -b 4096 -E stride=32,stripe-width=64 /dev/md0

It works like a charm.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-08-15 15:15:35

Create a GPT partition table and format with a large volume (solved)

#2 2013-08-16 11:15:58

Re: Create a GPT partition table and format with a large volume (solved)

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