[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: 2TB file system



On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 09:51:44PM -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Rick Pasotto <rick@niof.net> wrote:
> > I recently acquired a 2TB SATA HD that I have not yet installed. It will
> > be used entirely to store media files. Would there be any problems in
> > formating the entire disk (no partitions) as an EXT4 file system?
> >
> > Any other considerations?
> 
> These days, though with current motherboards and SATA controllers,
> current releases of Debian with 2.6 kernels,ext4, and 64-bit operating
> system? Goddess only knows how large of a disk you can manage. Try it
> with your system and let us know!!!!!

It should always work in some form, though you might need to
restrict its size with a jumper or force 512 byte sectors if you
see problems.

One odd problem I came across when I installed a pair of WD20EARS
2.0GB discs is that while they are 4KiB sector drives, they tell the
opearating system that their native sector size is 512B, i.e. they
lie.  Who knows why?--presumably so it's backward compatible or
something, but it does mean when partitioning you need to manually
partition on 4KiB boundaries or else you'll suffer from poor
performance.  Hopefully in the future they will tell the truth so
that all the tools just work.

I worked around this by partitioning using GPT and telling the
tool (parted IIRC) to use units of 4KiB to ensure correct partition
alignment.  It's all working nicely so far with LVM and/or Btrfs on
top.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linux             http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
 `. `'   Printing on GNU/Linux?       http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/
   `-    GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848   Please GPG sign your mail.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: