How do I create large partitions in FreeBSD?

[Peter Steele]

>You cannot use fdisk for this, because fdisk creates MBR partition tables and these partitions are limited to 2 TB. You have three
>options:
>
>1. Use GPT instead of MBR. This is handled by gpt (FreeBSD 7) and gpart (FreeBSD 8) commands.

We're running 8.0. I'll have to check out gpart.

>2. Use a "dangerously dedicated" partitioning scheme.
>3. Bypass all partitioning issues and do what Polytropon suggested.
>
>The third option will only work if you don't need to boot from the array and are happy with a single 11TB file system.

We do need to boot from these drives so this is not an option.

> The second option gives you partitions and the ability to boot FreeBSD, but no other operating system will recognize the array.
>Device names will be da1a, da1b, etc. To do this run the following
>commands:
>
>bsdlabel -w -B da1

When I run this command I get:

# bsdlabel -w -B da1
bsdlabel: disks with more than 2^32-1 sectors are not supported

So that seems we are limited to option 1. We didn't anticipate this; hope there aren't unexpected gotchas lurking around the corner...