Out of Space

[Rolf Grunsky]

On 08/09/2016 12:50 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 August 2016 09:58:59 Liam Proven wrote:
>
>> On 9 August 2016 at 15:47, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>> i thought that was the setup described above (grub being 850GB into
>>> the 1TB disk), but i re-read again and gene was talking about /boot
>>> not grub ... sorry for the confusion then, if grub sits in the MBR
>>> it should surely find everything...
>>
>> If a large disk (terabyte+) is formatted as a single huge partition,
>> then yes, 5% of it for metadata is plausible.
>>
>> But it's probably more normal to partition it up into smaller
>> subvolumes. E.g. my Mac's external 3TB drive has Ubuntu root & home
>> partitions, a Windows partition, a bootable copy of the previous
>> version of Mac OS X, and then a ~2TB Time Machine partition.
>>
>> Yes, GRUB can be installed into the MBR (the normal way) or into a
>> partition's boot sector (needs `` -- force '' & it complains, but it
>> works).
>>
>> The only issue I see here is that terabyte-sized drives are usually
>> partitioned with GPT, not MBR. With GPT there is no MBR present.
>> However, GPT disks are only bootable on UEFI machines. With UEFI, a
>> boot disk must have a ~100MB FAT32 system partition, and as I
>> understand it, GRUB goes in there, not in the disk's boot sector or in
>> the root partition's boot sector.
>
> Following along with this thread while catching up on the yard work, I am
> reading some disturbing info that I don't believe has been discussed.
>
> What I am reading, is that since these motherboards are old enough that
> every partion in my system is an MBR partition. They have no knowledge
> of this UEFI thing.  And from that you are telling me such a thing as
> this GPT is rather worthless to me. Your gdisk utility, if ran with
> fdisk syntax, reports it finds valid MBR on both of the terabyte drives
> currently in this machine, and says it will convert it to GPT as the
> next operation. Since from what I've read here, that would be a
> disastrous thing, I obviously typed a 'q'enter.
>
> I've not yet installed the next drive so I'll have a playground. But if I
> can't use a GPT partitioned drive anyway, please tell me why I should
> bother?
>
> MBR works fine on a terabyte drive, I've done it 5 or 6 times already.
> The only PITA is trying to get the partitions aligned correctly on a
> 4k/sector drive, which 1 or 2, probably 3 when I hook the cables up to
> this new drive. So far as I know, which is a little 'dated', none of the
> partitioner's we have looks at your choices, and slightly adjusts the
> MBR settings, either automatically, or by calling the speed killing
> error to your attention.  Or have they now silently grown this ability?
>
> This next drive WILL have to be a bootable (as /dev/sda) drive at some
> point.  That is not optional.  And none of these MB's knows what UEFI
> is.
>
>> --
>> Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
>> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
>> MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
>> Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
>
Drives that are 2T or less can be partitioned either as GPT or MBR. My 
XP system ran quite happily with 2 2T drives and XP required MBR 
partitions. Drives larger than 2T MUST be partitioned as GPT (or maybe 
something else depending on the OS, are MBR or GPT required for BSD?) 
Drives larger than 2T CANNOT be partitioned as MBR!

If the drives in question are 2T or less than the partition type is not 
relevant and other issues (i.e. BIOS issues) will be important.

R

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