4tb external (non SAS) disk - what do I need?

English Hardware
#1

I’ve seen various resources discussin 4TB disks, that leave me wondering how hard they are to connect.

What I have is an external (non SAS) box that can take 5x1TB disks in a Raid5 config, giving a 4TB external drive.

I have tried booting OpenSuse rescue system on a 64 bit PowerBook, and connecting the drive (using USB or Firewire) and it does not seem to recognize the size correctly.

It’s currently configured as a 2.5TB drive, and parted 1.8.8 says it’s 300GB.

300GB looks like 2500-2200=300 to me, so Im assuming we are not working with 64 bit addressing throughout.

I assume it’s a problem with a 64 MacBook.

But before I go any further with my plans, I’d be interested to how (if at all) I can build an OpenSuSE machine that will actually see all 4TB. FWIW, the external box can also do eSATA.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#2

I think you need to tell up what it does see:\

I’m not familiar with an external (non SAS) box at all, but, I also think you may need to set up suse to be able to use a raid array.

Since about 10.1 we have been able to use a motherboard bios array and do an install to that raid array automatically. Other than that, you are going to have to do the set up manually.

look in /usr/share/doc/packages/dmraid and look around in /usr/share/doc/howto/en/html

PS: you may have better luck getting an answer on the openSUSE mailing-lists @ Communicate: - openSUSE)

#3

It sees a 300GB scsi (firewire or USB) disk.

The box is a self-contained raid array. From the point of view of machines it is connected to, it looks like a large eSATA/USB/FW (depending on interface chosen) disk.

If I configure it to present itself as < 2.2TB, it works. As soon as it presents itself as containing 2.2TB, SuSE 11.0 sees it as a disk of (Size-2.2)TB.

Will try that one if I get nowhere here. Was really just hoping someone else had managed to make large external disks to work (g. the LaCie 4TB ones come to mind) and could send me their hw config.

#4

Maybe this will help: Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 Storage Adminstration Guide

#5

Looks nice, but it seems to just be management software.

Does not seem to answer the question of what hardware is needed to support 4TB drives … or really, which software. Most people seem to think gpt under parted is sufficient, but I suspect I am missing the relevane hardware requirements.

#6

Try these: ‘esata’ in opensuse - MARC](http://marc.info/?l=opensuse&w=2&r=1&s=esata&q=b)

#7

On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 13:06 +0000, friedwonton wrote:
> snakedriver;1856570 Wrote:
> > Maybe this will help: ‘Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 Storage
> > Adminstration Guide’ (http://tinyurl.com/6qtvwa)
>
> Looks nice, but it seems to just be management software.
>
> Does not seem to answer the question of what hardware is needed to
> support 4TB drives … or really, which software. Most people seem to
> think gpt under parted is sufficient, but I suspect I am missing the
> relevane hardware requirements.
>
>

Technically, depending on your config, you don’t need a partition
table at all. Avoids having to deal with partition tables and
the tools that can’t understand gpt tables.

Just place the whole disk under LVM.

pvcreate /dev/scsi-device-blah-blah-whatever

Create a volume group and create logical volumes
instead of partitions.

Just an alternative (it’s what we do).

However, I advise against large filesystems (logical
volumes). No filesystem handles operations to those
particularly well. But I created one below
just for fun. 8TB LUN exposed to a SLES 10.1 system
as /dev/sdf, I did the pvcreate, a vgcreate (largeone)
and lvcreate (large)… did a mkreiserfs mounted
it and rand a bonnie++ benchmark on it.

testy:~ # mount /dev/largeone/large /tmpmnt
testy:~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2 73G 40G 33G 55% /
udev 2.0G 172K 2.0G 1% /dev
/dev/sda1 21G 2.4G 18G 12% /windows/C
/dev/mapper/largeone-large
7.3T 33M 7.3T 1% /tmpmnt

Simple bonnie++ test (reiserfs)

Version 1.01d ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input-
–Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block–
–Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %
CP /sec %CP
testy 8G 100228 98 170504 57 80197 21 99939 72 195004 21
398.1 0
------Sequential Create------ --------Random
Create--------
-Create-- --Read— -Delete-- -Create-- --Read—
-Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %
CP /sec %CP
16 28388 99 +++++ +++ 23358 100 27690 100 +++++ +++
22003 99
testy,8G,100228,98,170504,57,80197,21,99939,72,195004,21,398.1,0,16,28388,99,+++++,+++,23358,100,27690,100,+++++,+++,22003,99