2.4TB disk - MBR and GPT coexist?

[Jo Rhett]

Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
> 
> On Jan 11, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Jo Rhett wrote:
> 
>> 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 is already possible for them to coexist. It's not uncommon in the
> industry to use MBR partitions even though the disk has GPT. The
> point is that you need to tools to avoid making a mess. Ideally you
> want the MBR partitions mirrored by the GPT so that the kernel only
> has to deal with GPT. The BIOS will use the MBR to boot.
> 
> The gpt(8) tool can actually be used to set this up. You partition
> the disk with fdisk, but only for the boot partition. Then you run
> gpt(8) to migrate the MBR into a GPT, specifying the -s option so
> that you get a single GPT partition overlapping the MBR slice. After
> that you restore the MBR partition. Now you can use GPT to define
> a big partition. The kernel will use GPT and since you used -s when
> you migrate the MBR, the kernel will create device nodes with the
> same name as it would for the MBR partitions...

That is exactly what I was hoping to find, but was unable to be certain 
that it was possible from what I saw in the searches.

To make this into a step-by-step, what do you mean by "restore the MBR 
partition" ?  From backup, or...?


-- 
Jo Rhett
senior geek
Silicon Valley Colocation