How to Add a New Disk Larger Than 2TB to An Existing Linux

onebuck · 05-07-2017, 09:13 AM

Hi,

How to Add a New Disk Larger Than 2TB to An Existing Linux

Quote:

Have you ever tried to do the partitioning of hard disk larger than 2TB using fdisk utility and wondered why you end up getting a warning to use GPT? Yes, you got that right. We cannot partition a hard disk larger than 2TB using fdisk tool.
In such cases, we can use parted command. The major difference lies in the partitioning formats that fdisk uses DOS partitioning table format and parted uses GPT format.
TIP: You can use gdisk as well instead of parted tool.
In this article, we will show you to add a new disk larger than 2TB to an existing Linux server such as RHEL/CentOS or Debian/Ubuntu.

You can use this technique for adding disk to other Gnu/Linux be sure you have gdisk & parted. gdisk tutorial can be additional help, plus you will find additional links at the gdisk tutorial. parted wiki may also help you to understand usage.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

hazel · 05-07-2017, 09:30 AM

Apparently the latest versions of fdisk incorporate gdisk.

onebuck · 05-07-2017, 10:03 AM

Hi,

Yes, newer fdisk does use the experimental use for GPT libs for gdisk. Not all Gnu/Linux have moved to the newer fdisk utility. The tutorial does show the use for 'parted' to create GPT.

GPT fdisk can be used but the author even recommends the use of Gparted or parted to create GPT.

Users do have choices!

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

syg00 · 05-07-2017, 06:20 PM

And you don't have to use gpt - but with a new disk it makes sense to these days.
I have a 3T disk fully occupied using MBR. You just need to take care with partition placement.

rknichols · 05-07-2017, 07:23 PM

And, if you happen to have a disk with "Advanced 4Kn Format" (4K native: 4096 physical, 4096 logical), you can go all the way to 16TiB with MBR partitioning, though why you would want to do that would be interesting to hear.

sundialsvcs · 05-08-2017, 08:58 AM

Also be sure to use LVM = Logical Volume Management so that you can allocate disk space to applications without regard to the number and size of physical disks and partitions. (This is an operating system feature, not a disk feature.)

Lnthink · 05-09-2017, 12:33 PM

Well, since it's a running system already - you don't need to partition the disk at all.
You can just use it...
if it's for example /dev/vdc - then you can either format a file system on it (mkfs), or you can use
lvm and cut the disk up and allocate it that way.

I generally only like to partition root drives to create swap, boot, root, etc. after that, I'm just looking for whole drives or lvm subcomponents.

-- J

Habitual · 05-09-2017, 01:29 PM

gpt supports up to 128 partitions.