Re: [CentOS] 64 bit hardware and filesystem size limit

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 17:35 -0500, Sean Staats wrote:

We recently bought a 32-bit Xeon system with a 12-port 3Ware RAID card and a dozen 500GB drives. We wanted to create 4TB drive arrays; however, we soon discovered that there is about a 2.2TB drive array size limit on 32-bit hardware. Does that sound correct?

Yes, 2^40 = 2TiB ~ 2.2TB (2.2 * 10^12). This is a PC geometry issue, although Linux can get around it.

Would replacing the 32-bit mobo/cpu with a 64-bit mobo/cpu allow us to use drive arrays larger than 2.2TB?

Actually it's a 3Ware question because 3Ware has an intelligent ASIC on- board. It's driving the disk array, not Linux. It's merely presenting the disk array as a block, and Linux talks to the ASIC, not the disks.