2.4TB disk - MBR and GPT coexist?

[Jo Rhett]

> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:56:43 -0800 Jo Rhett <jrhett at svcolo.com> wrote:
>> Thanks for the reply.  The problem is that I have a single 6-drive
>> (550gb/ea) RAID-5 array.  If I split two disks off to make a RAID-1
>> boot device, I'll lose 1TB of usable storage.

On Jan 11, 2007, at 3:55 PM, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> Hmm, why can't you just make your controller create two logical arrays
> onto the one physical array? Doesnt the controller support this  
> feature?

Not any one that I've ever seen in commodity disks.  Yes, on big  
fiber channel disk cabinets.  No to 6-8 drive raid controllers.

>> Since we're going to be stuck with old BIOSes for a long time after
>> 2TB is a cheap disk drive at [store], is anyone considering doing
>> the work to make GPT co-exist with an MBR block?  It seems like the
>> obvious and sensible choice.  You boot from the MBR partition, and
>> then load the GPT module and access the remaining data after that...
>
> Is there a reason why we can't have a boot loader that boots off a GPT
> disk? Or is the problem with the bios?

My understanding is that BIOS expects 32-bit partition sizes.  So we  
must have a 32-bit MBR partition for the BIOS to boot from.

I'm just wondering what it will take to make GPT (which in theory can  
co-exist with MBR) work for the remainder of the drive?

-- 
Jo Rhett
senior geek
Silicon Valley Colocation