Out of Space

[Liam Proven]

On 9 August 2016 at 18:50, Gene Heskett <gheskett at shentel.net> wrote:
> 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.

You don't get to choose on a partition-by-partition basis. This is a
disk-by-disk thing.

A disk is either partitioned MBR (< 2TB) or GPT (> 2TB).

Between 1-2 you can choose, but MBR maxes out at 2TB. Greater than
that, you _must_ use GPT.

> 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.

If your OS boots off an MBR drive and it understands GPT, then you can
have and use >2TB drives on a machine with a plain old BIOS. But you
can't boot off them.

> Your gdisk utility,

My gdisk utility?!

I don't even know what ``gdisk'' _is_. Not mine!

>  if ran with
> fdisk syntax, reports it finds valid MBR on both of the terabyte drives
> currently in this machine,

1TB can use MBR fine, no problems.

> and says it will convert it to GPT as the
> next operation.

No idea what that tool is. Never seen it or used it or heard of it. If
you have a BIOS and all your drives are under 2TB, you don't need GPT
partition tables.

> 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?

Over 2TB you have no choice.

> MBR works fine on a terabyte drive, I've done it 5 or 6 times already.

Yes it does.

> 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?

I've heard this is a problem. I don't own any so I don't know.

> 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.

Then you'd better stay with <= 2TB drives until you replace the m/b then.


-- 
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