Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:04:01 -0800 From: Jo Rhett <jrhett@svcolo.com> To: Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt@mac.com> Cc: stable@FreeBSD.org, Nikolay Pavlov <quetzal@zone3000.net> Subject: Re: 2.4TB disk - MBR and GPT coexist? Message-ID: <45A74F01.7040200@svcolo.com> In-Reply-To: <F3B0BD49-133C-4BD4-A747-68BD75F72D63@mac.com> References: <45A5FD8A.6080409@svcolo.com> <2918081F-D376-410B-B6FD-42BDD3323575@svcolo.com> <20070111213444.GB17185@zone3000.net> <D0D0CE06-B991-4945-B12B-152BA930106B@svcolo.com> <F3B0BD49-133C-4BD4-A747-68BD75F72D63@mac.com>
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Marcel Moolenaar wrote: > > On Jan 11, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Jo Rhett wrote: > >> Since we're going to be stuck with old BIOSes for a long time after >> 2TB is a cheap disk drive at [store], is anyone considering doing the >> work to make GPT co-exist with an MBR block? > > It is already possible for them to coexist. It's not uncommon in the > industry to use MBR partitions even though the disk has GPT. The > point is that you need to tools to avoid making a mess. Ideally you > want the MBR partitions mirrored by the GPT so that the kernel only > has to deal with GPT. The BIOS will use the MBR to boot. > > The gpt(8) tool can actually be used to set this up. You partition > the disk with fdisk, but only for the boot partition. Then you run > gpt(8) to migrate the MBR into a GPT, specifying the -s option so > that you get a single GPT partition overlapping the MBR slice. After > that you restore the MBR partition. Now you can use GPT to define > a big partition. The kernel will use GPT and since you used -s when > you migrate the MBR, the kernel will create device nodes with the > same name as it would for the MBR partitions... That is exactly what I was hoping to find, but was unable to be certain that it was possible from what I saw in the searches. To make this into a step-by-step, what do you mean by "restore the MBR partition" ? From backup, or...? -- Jo Rhett senior geek Silicon Valley Colocation
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