Formatting Disks over 2 TiB with parted

Posted on Monday, February 25, 2019




I just added a big hard drive to my ESXi box and I created a virtual drive of about 3.5 TiB for a virtualized machine.   But I had a problem…

When I went to format it… using my typical method of using fdisk to create a partition I noticed a problem…

If I try to create the partion


 > fdisk /dev/vdb



I get the following warning








 Device does not contain a recognized partition table.
The size of this disk is 3.1 TiB (3435973836800 bytes). DOS partition table format can not be used on drives for volumes larger than 2199023255040 bytes for 512-byte sectors. Use GUID partition table format (GPT).


If I ignore the warning and partition and format the drive…



 > fdisk /dev/vdb





I only get 2 TiB drive…  I was warned J

So how do I fix this… How do I do it right?
I use gparted!



Formatting it right



So here is how to do it J

Switch to root


 > sudo su -


Start parted

 > parted


Run the following commands from with gparted (replace XXX with your drive)


 > select /dev/sdXXXX







 > mklabel gpt








 > print free








 > mkpart pimary


Then set
     ext4
    Start?  0
     End?  3.2 TB

Oops




Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance.


Let me cancel and run print free again


 > print free




Let me try those numbers



 > mkpart pimary


Then set
File system type?  [ext2]? ext4
Start? 17.4kB
End? 3436GB



Close enough J  Enter Yes




Hmmm





 > unit s
 > print free
 > mkpart pimary ext4 0% 100%
 > print



OK now it’s happy




Exit parted


 > quit




 > ls -alh /dev/sd*




There it is..

Format it

Replace XXX with your drive name


 > mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdXXXX1




Now let me do a quick edit of /etc/fstab and mount it.




 > vi /etc/fstab


And I put the following in it


/dev/sdb1  /test         ext4  rw,suid,dev,exec,noauto,nouser,async  0  0





 > blkid -o list






 > fdisk -l /dev/sdb1





Check it


Let me make a /test folder and mount it.



  > mkdir /test
  > mount /test
  > df -h





Bam!! Wahoo!


References

[1]        How To Create a Partition Using “parted” Command
                Accessed 02/2019
[2]        Ubuntu, formatting a 3TB drive
                Accessed 02/2019
[2]        GNU Parted: Solving the dreaded "The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance"




8 comments:

  1. bonjour
    comment je peux vous contacter

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