Help partitioning a 3TB Drive

Message

gentoo_newguy · Post by **gentoo_newguy** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:28 pm

Hi everyone ,
I have just received a 3TB drive and I am wondering how I go about using all the space for the HD.
I have tried to partition with fdisk and cfdisk and seem to be having a few issues.
I would like to have four partitions on the HD.

/boot
swap
/
/LargeDisk

I ran into a problem where it partition was not using up all the space quoting "unusable"
After a bit of reading I noticed i needed to use extended partitions but im still having the same problem.

Could anyone assist me of what I mat be doing wrong here ?
Hopefully this is something simple.

Thanks Gentoo Forums

py-ro · Post by **py-ro** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:31 pm

You can't use MBR Layout for this, you must use GPT Layout to fully use the disc.

gdisk, parted can create one.

Bye
Pye

gentoo_newguy · Post by **gentoo_newguy** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 2:54 pm

Ok thanks py will get back to you.
Never used before as im using it from the minimal disk and its quite tricky I have no idea about sectors and GUID's
could some explain this a little bit more for me please ?

Also will i be able to boot from this disk ?

py-ro · Post by **py-ro** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:17 pm

Works pretty the same, only the on disc format is changed (from a user viewpoint=

gentoo_newguy · Post by **gentoo_newguy** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:43 pm

Ok but when creating partitions its asking me for start and stop sectors and then guid's
I seem to only be able to create one partition finding it very confusing

Veldrin · Post by **Veldrin** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:53 pm

what tool are you using?
I prefer parted/gparted. sysresccd provides both.

V.

gentoo_newguy · Post by **gentoo_newguy** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:00 pm

I have tried to use gdisk and i just tried parted
but there is no gparted on the minimal disc
Its all from command line so im just finding it confusing to the usual cfdisk and fdisk.

I dont no how to set the partition size in MB
I dont understand sectors and GUIDs

Both apps are a little confusing for me

srs5694 · Post by **srs5694** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:54 pm

I'm the author of gdisk. I modelled it closely after fdisk, so it works in almost exactly the same way. The biggest single difference is the fact that gdisk uses two-byte partition type codes, but mostly those are the same as the MBR/fdisk codes with "00" tagged on, as in "8300" for Linux or "8200" for Linux swap. These codes get translated into the GUIDs that the GPT data structures use, so you don't need to deal with GUIDs directly unless you want to.

Modern versions of fdisk, like gdisk, deal in sector numbers rather than cylinders. The truth is that "cylinders" have evolved from being a usable reality (in the 1980s) to a convenient fiction (in the 1990s) to an inconvenient fiction (in the 2000s) to a serious problem (in the 2010s). Thus, if you've been thinking about disk layout in terms of cylinders, it's long past time that you begin thinking about it in terms of sectors (or blocks; the two terms are effectively synonymous in this context). Note that both fdisk and gdisk accept partition sizes in terms of mebibytes, gibibytes, and tebibytes, as well as in sector values. For instance, you can enter "+200G" as the partition size to create a 200GiB partition.

You might find cgdisk a little less confusing than gdisk; cgdisk is modelled after cfdisk, so it offers fewer options but has a somewhat friendlier user interface. The two programs (gdisk and cgdisk) use exactly the same underlying partition-manipulation code, though; they've just got different user interfaces.

For more on using gdisk, see its man page or Web-based documentation, and particularly its gdisk walkthrough and cgdisk walkthrough pages.

gentoo_newguy · Post by **gentoo_newguy** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:58 pm

Thanks so much for all the replys im going to give it another go and il come back if i have any problems.
As i said using cfdisk is so is so simple i dont really have to worry about anything it kind of does it all for me.
Im going to try again

Thanks for your help

gentoo_newguy · Post by **gentoo_newguy** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 5:53 pm

I think i have it working now thank you so much.
Using cgdisk /dev/sda really made things easier
Was getting very confused with the new format
I am able to boot of this correct ?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 7:02 pm

gentoo_newguy,

Yes you can boot GPT partitions. You need to make sure you have GPT partition support in your kernel.

srs5694 · Post by **srs5694** » Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:33 pm

gentoo_newguy wrote:I think i have it working now thank you so much.
Using cgdisk /dev/sda really made things easier
Was getting very confused with the new format
I am able to boot of this correct ?

Yes, but with some caveats:

On a BIOS-based computer, GRUB works best if it's got a BIOS Boot Partition (type code EF02 in cgdisk, no filesystem). This can be pretty small -- under 1MiB on some systems, although I've heard of configurations that require 2MiB. Be sure it appears under the 2TiB mark on the disk.
If your computer boots using EFI, you should have an EFI System Partition (ESP), which should have a cgdisk type code of EF00, be 100-500MiB in size, and have a FAT filesystem. OSes place their EFI boot loaders there.
Some firmware is buggy and won't boot in BIOS mode from a GPT disk unless you jump through some extra hoops. Most often, you need to use fdisk to set the 0xEE protective partition as bootable. Don't worry about this unless you run into problems. If you do, you can read more about the problems and solutions here.