[CentOS] mkfs.ext3 on a 9TB volume

Hello,

I have:
CentOS4.1 x86_64
directly-attached Infortrend 9TB array QLogic HBA seen as sdb
GPT label created in parted

I want one single 9TB ext3 partition.

I am experiencing crazy behavior from mke2fs / mkfs.ext3 (tried both).

If I create partitions in parted up to approx 4,100,000 MB in parted,
mkfs.ext3 works great. It lists the right number of blocks and creates
a filesystem that fills the partition.

Any partition approx 4,200,000 MB and larger, mkfs.ext3 sees a totally
random number of blocks, equivalent to a few hundred GBs of space. It
create healthy partitions, but they are way too small!!!

>From dmesg to parted, I can see the system recognizes the hardware
properly, including the number of blocks. And I know the upper limit
of ext3 is 16TB, not 4!

What am I doing wrong? What wall am I hitting around 4TB?
HELP!!!

Thanks,
Francois Caen

output of a few commands:

(parted) p
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0.000-9149550.000 megabytes
Disk label type: gpt
Minor    Start       End     Filesystem  Name                  Flags
1          0.017 4100000.000  ext3          <------ 4TB partition
2     4100000.000 9149549.983            <------- 5TB partition 

# mke2fs -n /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
524812288 inodes, 1049599995 blocks  <------------ GOOD!!!!
9530326 blocks (0.91%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
32032 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
        102400000, 214990848, 512000000, 550731776, 644972544

# mke2fs -n /dev/sdb2
mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
109477888 inodes, 218942971 blocks <--------  BAD!!!!! only 830GB!!!
10947148 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
6682 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
        102400000, 214990848