6 replies to this topic

[sikhwarrior]

I was wondering if ubuntu is able to use 3tb hard drives straight away or would i have to mess around with ubuntu to make it work?

[PrincessLuna]

Should work directly (assuming partitioning is done right). It was supported on Linux well before Windows.

[simplezz]

I believe a standard MBR partition table has an upper limit of 2TB per volume. So you can either divide the disk up into multiple volumes (which makes sense on a 3TB drive anyway), or use GPT instead of an MBR. Most of the partitioning tools support GPT nowadays.

The limit is introduced because a standard MBR's partition entry uses a 32 bit unsigned integer to represent the number of sectors ( a sector being 512 bytes normally ). 2 ^ 32 = 4294967296 sectors. That's exactly 2 TB if you multiply it by 512.

[javagreen]

simplezz, on 07 October 2012 - 22:36, said:

I believe a standard MBR partition table has an upper limit of 2TB per volume. So you can either divide the disk up into multiple volumes (which makes sense on a 3TB drive anyway), or use GPT instead of an MBR. Most of the partitioning tools support GPT nowadays.

The limit is introduced because a standard MBR's partition entry uses a 32 bit unsigned integer to represent the number of sectors ( a sector being 512 bytes normally ). 2 ^ 32 = 4294967296 sectors. That's exactly 2 TB if you multiply it by 512.

This is correct

[sikhwarrior]

So i can just pop in a CD and then bang it will recognise the 3tb hard drive ? And my motherboard has UEFI

[simplezz]

sikhwarrior, on 08 October 2012 - 16:49, said:

So i can just pop in a CD and then bang it will recognise the 3tb hard drive ? And my motherboard has UEFI

It will recognise the drive. But the actual partitioning will largely depend on if you boot the system in legacy or UEFI mode.

A simple way to try before you buy so to speak, is to load up the live cd and mount a volume of the drive (if it's already formatted), or run gparted if it's not, then mount the volume after you create it.

I haven't heard of any major problems with Ubuntu and EFI. But let us know how you get on in the live cd.

[sikhwarrior]

I got a live CD it recognises the 3tb hard drive straight way