[CentOS] Formatting a USB Drive

Wed Apr 10 19:06:52 UTC 2013
Jason T. Slack-Moehrle <slackmoehrle at gmail.com>

Hi Mark,

Do you override the automatic fsck check with tune2fs? It would be a huge
bummer to do through a check frequently, I forget the defaults but I think
180 days or a certain number of mounts, iirc.

Jason



On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:39 AM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:

> Jason T. Slack-Moehrle wrote:
> >
> > I have a Drobo, connected to a CentOS 6.4 box. The box sees it as
> > /dev/sdg.
> >
> > I want to format it ext3 (as they dont support ext4) but when I try I
> get:
> <snip>
> > So I run:
> > # parted
> > GNU Parted 2.1
> > Using /dev/sda
> > Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
> > (parted) select /dev/sdg
> > Using /dev/sdg
> > (parted) print
> > Model: DROBO DroboPro (scsi)
> > Disk /dev/sdg: 17.6TB
> > Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> > Partition Table: gpt
> >
> > Number  Start  End  Size  File system  Name  Flags
> >
> > (parted)
> >
> > and looking at an example of creating a partition: (parted) mkpart
> primary
> > 106 16179
> >
> > I dont know what to do next since I dont see any partitions listed. I
> dont
> > know what do to for the start and end point, although the man page says
> > "size in MB". Do I just say 0 to (and convert 16.0TB to MB? Yes, I know
> it
> > says 17.6 TB but this model drobo can only support partitions up to 16tb
> > without making a second partition.
> >
> > Can anyone provide some advice on that I am missing conceptually?
>
> Several issues. First, if you use 4k blocks, the max filesystem size for
> ext3 is 16TB (see wikipedia on ext3). Second, I can't remember where, but
> on some filesystem tool's manpage, I read that the tools have problems
> going over 16TB. Third, fsck on a 16TB filesystem will take *days*,
> literally. I'm setting up, right now, a humongous RAID box, and I'll
> probably be divvying up the 42TB (mirrored!) as 3 14TB filesystems, and
> they're going to be ext4.
>
>         mark
>
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