raid array trouble > 2TB - freebsd 5.4 install

[Steven Jurczyk]

general wrote:

>Hey all, i've had a bit of trouble getting freebsd installed with my 2.5TB array.  
>
>I'm using a 3ware 9500s Raid controller with 12 250G drives.  I've been through this install before a few months ago when the array was only 1.5TB installing freebsd 5.3.  
>  
>
I have use 3ware 9500s with 12*250 and 12*400G drives. The problem is 
that sector count variable in partition table and bsdlabel on i386 are 
32bit - so maximum size of one partition/label are 2 TB. But You can 
create (with command line fdisk from FreeBSD 5.x) more partitions on big 
disk and this works (I have two 2 TB partitions on 4 TB array):

# df
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da1s1d    1.9T    1.7T     64G    96%    /matrix1
/dev/da1s2d    1.9T    1.8T    -59G   103%    /matrix2
/dev/da0s1d    1.9T    1.7T     57G    97%    /matrix3
/dev/da0s2d    1.9T    1.7T     95G    95%    /matrix4

 The second solution is using WHOLE disk (without partitioning and 
disklabeling) for one file system:

newfs -U /dev/da0
mount /dev/da0 /mnt

But in this situation the system must start from other small disk...

--
best regards
steve at home.pl