[RndTbl] Linux 4K drive formatting

[Adam Thompson]

One other thing… the IBM M1015 ServeRAID card can often be had cheaply, and although it is a RAID card, you can apparently flash the generic IT-mode LSI firmware onto it, turning it into a regular HBA.

See  <http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-75-dollars/> http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-75-dollars/ for details.

 

-Adam Thompson

athompso at athompso.net

(204) 291-7950 - direct

(204) 489-6515 - fax

 

From: roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of Kevin McGregor
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2013 1:20 PM
To: Adam Thompson; Continuation of Round Table discussion
Subject: Re: [RndTbl] Linux 4K drive formatting

 

Well, I upgraded to 12.04 and of course there's no change since the LSI SAS1068E controller doesn't support drives larger than 2 TB. Sigh.

 

Can anyone recommend a 2- or 4-port PCIe non-RAID controller that works under Linux, supports large drives and is affordable?

 

Kevin

 

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Kevin McGregor <kevin.a.mcgregor at gmail.com> wrote:

In dmesg, it shows

[   11.317498] scsi 6:0:1:0: Direct-Access     ATA      WDC WD30EFRX-68A 0A80 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

[   11.319897] sd 6:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0

[   11.323370] sd 6:0:1:0: [sdc] 4294967294 512-byte logical blocks: (2.19 TB/1.99 TiB)

[   11.325746] scsi 6:0:2:0: Direct-Access     ATA      WDC WD30EFRX-68A 0A80 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

[   11.328162] sd 6:0:2:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0

[   11.330410] sd 6:0:2:0: [sdd] 4294967294 512-byte logical blocks: (2.19 TB/1.99 TiB)

 

In /proc/partitions:

   8       32 2147483647 sdc

   8       48 2147483647 sdd

 

Using parted:

$ sudo parted /dev/sdc

GNU Parted 2.2

Using /dev/sdc

Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.

(parted) print

Error: /dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label

(parted) mklabel gpt

(parted) print

Model: ATA WDC WD30EFRX-68A (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdc: 2199GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: gpt

 

Number  Start  End  Size  File system  Name  Flags

 

 

It looks like the kernel is not recognizing the size correctly.

 

So... Upgrade to Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS?

 

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:19 PM, Adam Thompson <athompso at athompso.net> wrote:

Oh… and if it’s not just an fdisk problem, you can contact WD support directly for RED drives only:  <http://support.wdc.com/contact/contact.asp?lang=en&ct=wdred> http://support.wdc.com/contact/contact.asp?lang=en&ct=wdred 

 

 

-Adam Thompson

athompso at athompso.net

(204) 291-7950 <tel:%28204%29%20291-7950>  - direct

(204) 489-6515 <tel:%28204%29%20489-6515>  - fax

 

From: roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-bounces at muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of Kevin McGregor
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 5:54 PM
To: Continuation of Round Table discussion
Subject: [RndTbl] Linux 4K drive formatting

 

So... I picked up my lovely new WD Red 3 TB drives today and installed them in my home server.

 

Now what? :-)  Specifically, I'm running Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS (2.6.32-45-server #102-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jan 2 22:53:00 UTC 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux), and I'm wondering if I should upgrade to Precise before I do anything with the drives, or use them as-is. I know I should align the partitions at (at least) 4 KB boundaries, and 10.04 by default uses 1 MB alignment, so I should be okay there.

 

Should I worry that the drive reports

fdisk -l /dev/sdc

 

Disk /dev/sdc: 2199.0 GB, 2199023254528 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 267349 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

 

...instead of 3 TB, and thinks the sector and I/O size is 512 bytes?

 

Advice, please!

 

Kevin

 

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