=Foreward=
You cannot use a >=2.1TB partition as your boot device unless you have a UEFI bios. That is beyond the scope of this article.
When using a >=2.1TB partition, you should be running 64-bit Amahi.
Before you use a >=2.1TB drive on Windows, please read this support article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408
=Introduction=
As hard drives have increased in capacity over time, some clever workarounds have been engineered to keep breaking barriers, such as the move from CHS to LBA. Unfortunately, with older style MBR partitions, there is a limit of 2.1TB that simply cannot be worked around using an MBR partition. We have to instead use newer GPT style partitions.
=Warning=
BE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT YOU ARE RUNNING THESE COMMANDS AGAINST THE CORRECT DRIVE. I WE CANNOT ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DATA LOSS , HARDWARE MALFUNCTION, ETC!
=OK, Let's do itParted usage=
First we label the drive with a GPT partition
{{Code| parted /dev/sdb mklabel gpt}}
Now we select sectors as a unit of measurement
{{Code| parted /dev/sdb unit s}}
Now we make the partition.
{{Code| parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext2 ext4 2048 -1}}
Parted may complain about the last sector and will automatically suggest a correct sector, just say Yes to the prompt.
We make it as a primary partition, ext2 ext4 filesystem, and we carefully select the sectors. The first number MUST be divisible by 8, so you can try 40, 48, 56, 64 etc... For me these numbers threw up errors, so I just went to 2048 and everything worked fine, and in the grand scheme of a 3TB drive, the extra sectors don't really matter :)
The reason that the starting sector is divisible by 8 is for aligning the sectors. This is because HDD's have traditionally been based around 512-byte sectors, yet newer, higher capacity HDD's are now arriving based around 4096-byte (a.k.a. 4k) sectors. The partitioning will still work with 512-bytes, but the drive's performance will be drastically impacted - in some testing it can be twice as slow, in others up to 25 times slower, depending on the sector alignment. So it's important to get this right!!!
=Alternative Parted usage=
Instead of the sequence of one liners up there, you can enter into parted itself like this. I give this as I don't know how your version of parted is going to behave. The interactive stuff from parted has been removed:
{{Code| parted /dev/sdb (parted) mklabel gpt (parted) unit s (parted) mkpart primary ext2 ext4 2048 -1 (parted) quit}}
=Format the drive!=
Finally, let's get that drive formatted to a nice ext4 volume:
{{Code|
mkfs.ext4 -T largefile4 /dev/sdb1
}}
=Adding the drive to your HDA=Normally to add a drive to Amahi, you would run the script hda-diskmount, which searches for any unmounted drives and mounts them. Unfortunately, this script doesn't yet cater for GPT partitionsmkfs. It runs an '''fdisk ext4 -l''' and searches out drives with a Linux system type, and with what it finds it mounts any that aren't mounted.T largefile4 /dev/sdb1
If we run '''fdisk -l''' by itself, we will see that our new =Adding to your HDA=See [[Adding_a_second_hard_drive_to_your_HDA#Mount|mount the hard drive doesn't return a system type of 'Linux', instead it returns 'GPT' as well as a warning:]].
{{Code|=A note about Western Digital drives=Code= WARNING: GPT Western Digital make some nice hardware, but they are also incredibly stupid. Many of their hard drives will automatically park their heads every 8 seconds, which wears out the hard drives very quickly, in some cases the HDD's will reach their design limit (GUID Partition Table300k parks for consumer, 600k parks for enterprise) detected on within 3-4 months!!! This isn'/dev/sdbt to say that the drives will necessarily die within 3-4 months, but it's still not good! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Fortunately we can fix this using a Western Digital tool named wdidle3. You can download it [http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113 here].
Disk Create a bootable usb drive using [http:/dev/sdb: 3000www.freedos.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes255 heads, 63 sectorsorg/freedos/track, 364801 cylinders, total 5860533168 sectorsUnits = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytesSector size (logicalfiles/physical)FreeDOS] and [http: 512 bytes / 4096 bytesI/O size (minimumunetbootin.sourceforge.net/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytesDisk identifierunetbootin], then copy wdidle.exe onto the usb drive. Boot up your Amahi box to FreeDOS and enter the following commands: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id Systemc:\ wdidle3 /devR wdidle3 /sdb1 1 4294967295 2147483647+ ee GPTPartition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.}}S300
So hda-diskmount correctly ignores This cd's you to the usb drive's root, then we run wdidle3 /R to display the current drive status, then we run wdidle3 /S300 to set the park time to 5 minutes. Alternatively you could run wdidle3 /D to completely disable the parking.
First we make our mount pointWhen you're done, simply restart the PC!
{{Code|
mkdir /var/hda/files/drives/sdb1
}}
Next we exercise good practice and backup our fstab filen.b. Unetbootin was a bit finnicky for me, I like to use `date +%Y%m%d` to give found that if I created the name drive with a date stamp e.g. /etc/fstab.20110731 represents a backup done on the 31st of July, 2011. This isnFreeDOS live CD that it wouldn't necessarywork, you could just use something like 'fstab.oldbut if I then re-created using unetbootin's automatic distribution download feature, but date-stamping your file backups is the USB stick worked a good habit to get into{{Code|Code= cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstabtreat. YMMV.`date +%Y%m%d`}}
Now we adjust = 4TB Hard Drives =If you have a new hard drive you can add it now. Here are some instructions to use for 4TB HDD using partedto make sure the fstab filealignment is right. Example here is with a new HDD that appears as /dev/sdb (read here: http://rainbow.chard.org/2013/01/30/how-to-align-partitions-for-best-performance-using-parted/)
{{Code|Code= echo -e parted /dev/sdb1$'\t\t'/var/hda/files/drives/sdb1$'\t'ext4$'\t'defaults$'\t'1 1 >> /etc/fstab}}sdb
What this does is adds a line to at the /etc/fstab file, telling it that when Amahi boots, it has to mount the drive. The $'\t' entries simply mean 'put in a tab space'parted prompt
If you now run '''cat /etc/fstab''' you should see a nice entry at the bottom, similar to this mklabel gpt mkpart primary ext4 4096s 100% align-check opt 1 quit
{{Code|
Code= cat /etc/fstab
## /etc/fstab# Created by anaconda on Thu Jul 28 23Formating the drive:56:48 2011## Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info#/dev/mapper/vg_hda-LogVol01 / ext4 defaults 1 1UUID=cc1204dd-a4f8-42f8-8736-b5970251a865 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2/dev/mapper/vg_hda-LogVol00 swap swap defaults 0 0tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0proc /proc proc defaults 0 0/dev/sdb1 /var/hda/files/drives/sdb1 ext4 defaults 1 1}}
Now you can either reboot to allow the fstab file to mount your new drive, or you can simply run '''mount mkfs.ext4 -a'''L greyhole01 /dev/sdb1
Now if you run mount by itself, you should see your Mounting the drive listed e.g.:
{{Code|Code= mount/dev/mapper/vg_hda-LogVol01 on / type ext4 (rw)proc on /proc type proc (rw)sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)/dev/sdd1 on /media/520abb16-ac7c-4f65 hda-9cc3-9e536c93dca2 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks)/dev/sdb1 on /var/hda/files/drives/sdb1 type ext4 (rw)}}diskmount
=A note about Western Digital drives=Western Digital make some nice hardware, but they are also incredibly stupid. Many of their hard drives will automatically park their heads every 8 seconds, which wears out Using the hard drives very quickly, in some cases output from the HDD's will reach their design limit (300k parks for consumerabove command, 600k parks for enterprise) within 3-4 months!!! This isn't to say that the drives will necessarily die within 3-4 months, but it's still not good! Fortunately we can fix this using a Western Digital tool named wdidle3. You can download it [http:first backup /etc/support.wdc.comfstab, and then add to /productetc/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113 here]fstab. Create a bootable usb drive using [http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/ FreeDOS] An example (and [http:only an example!) of what needs to be added to /etc/unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ unetbootin], then copy wdidle.exe onto the usb drive. Boot up your Amahi box to FreeDOS and enter the following commandsfstab all on one line: {{Code|c:\wdidle3 '''UUID=e68bc54a-b795-4ce0-802f-213f4ab71e60 /Rwdidle3 var/S300}} This cd's you to the usb drive's root, then we run wdidle3 hda/R to display the current drive status, then we run wdidle3 files/S300 to set the park time to 5 minutes. Alternatively you could run wdidle3 drives/D to completely disable the parking. When youdrive1 ext4 defaults 1 2're done, simply restart the PC! n.b. Unetbootin was a bit finnicky for me, I found that if I created the drive with a FreeDOS live CD that it wouldn't work, but if I then re-created using unetbootin's automatic distribution download feature, the USB stick worked a treat. YMMV.
