[CentOS] creating partitions on a 2.7TB drive

Tue Feb 23 16:11:48 UTC 2010
Khusro Jaleel <mailing-lists at kerneljack.com>

Thanks for your replies, just to clear things up, here is what I am seeing.

If I reboot server "A" with the Ubuntu LiveCD, I get:
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# parted /dev/sda p

Model: DELL PERC 5/i (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2998GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
1      32.3kB  53.7GB  53.7GB  primary  ext3              
2      53.7GB  62.3GB  8595MB  primary  linux-swap        
3      62.3GB  83.8GB  21.5GB  primary  ext3              
4      83.8GB  2199GB  2115GB  primary  xfs

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 2998.4 GB, 2998424043520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364537 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x852b68e5

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        6528    52436128+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            6529        7573     8393962+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3            7574       10185    20980890   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           10186      267349  2065669830   83  Linux
----------------------------------------

Now when I try this with CentOS, I get:
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Error: msdos labels do not support devices that have more than 4294967295 sectors.
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straight away. I understand what you guys are saying about GPT and not being able to boot off it, etc but how did I end up in this situation? And is this dangerous? 

I am thinking that if this is possible, why not try and setup the second server the same way? But it just feels wrong that Ubuntu allows this and if CentOS does not, there must be a good reason.