Question

Can't use full capcity of 1TB disks

Asked by: deepslalli

Hi Guys,

I am having a problem with an ULTRA 24 and assigning the full capcity to the disks accept the boot disk.

These disks (including boot disks) are not Sun disks, they are samsung/PC 1TB SATA Disks.

When I try to do a format it tells me to use the manufacture s/w to format the disks. When I do tell it to use Solaris Partitions it gives me a total of 140GB. If I try to increase the partition values (sizes) it tells me it's out of range, so the highest possible partition it gives me is 140GB.

However if start an install of Solaris on one of the HDDs I can specify I want to use all the capcity and it gives me nearly 1TB (good). However, if I then use that disk in the system as secondary drives then it reverts back to 140GB free space!!

Please tell me an easy way of getting the full amount of space for these drives.

Much appreciated if you can!!

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Asked On
2009-08-18 at 09:31:52ID24662012
Tags

Solaris

,

SATA

,

Ultra 24

Topics

Sun Solaris

,

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
6
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: ltorres321Posted on 2009-08-18 at 10:37:03ID: 25125600

Did you check the jumber setting.. Is this SATA or IDE.. Check the BIOS  When you put it as secondary did you put it as Slave or Cable Select??

 

by: ltorres321Posted on 2009-08-18 at 10:38:36ID: 25125621

Sorry misspelled Jumper setting..

 

by: ltorres321Posted on 2009-08-18 at 10:59:08ID: 25125810

Please post model Number of drive

 

by: deepslalliPosted on 2009-08-18 at 11:41:28ID: 25126190

Its SATA drive. If I put it as the root disk it configures the full space for my secondary disks. This is SATA (see above), there is no jumper setting on the back like IDE

Thank you

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-08-18 at 21:02:33ID: 25129535

Strange but it sounds like LBA issue. Is LBA enabled on this machine?

 

by: tomcatkevPosted on 2009-08-18 at 22:21:49ID: 25129787

Here's a useful bit of examples to read...

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/format_utility.jsp

And then what you might like to do is use "format -e" and use an EFI label, reportedly it works better with larger disks.

 

by: robocatPosted on 2009-08-18 at 23:53:07ID: 25130134


In order for Solaris to support 3rd party disks, you need to add an entry to the /etc/format.dat file.

Here's some pointers:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/805-7228/6j6q7uetg?a=view   (Adding a Third-Party Disk to Solaris)
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/805-7228/6j6q7ueu0?a=view  (search for format.dat)

You need to obtain the correct parameters from the manufacturer's documentation.



 

by: RowleyPosted on 2009-08-19 at 00:35:34ID: 25130303

EFI labels are required for disks larger than 1 terabyte on systems that run a 64-bit kernel. You could try labelling the disk with an EFI label using the format -e command. EFI labels are only supported from sol9 onwards.

Sounds like the system hasn't been able to figure out the correct disk geometry. If you fire up format and select said disk and type 'inq' at the prompt. You'll get back the vendor, product and firmware revision. Also, get the value of pcyl, nhead, and nsect using the 'ver' option. To roughly get the size of the disk that is in the label do some multiplication.

pcyl * nhead * nsec * 512. Take that number and convert it to gb. Google "nnnn bytes into gigabytes" where nnnn is the number you derived from the previous calc. If you've labelled the disk correctly, you should have a near enough match. If not, your label is wrong. Ensure you define the correct label. Us the 'type' (from within the format -e) and selecting option 'default'.

hth.

 

by: arthurjbPosted on 2009-08-19 at 10:50:38ID: 25135357

It sounds like a partitioning problem.
Please run these commands and post the results.

# format
(select the disk)

type par (enter)
then type pr (enter)

what you should now see is the partition table for the disk, please post this.

 

by: deepslalliPosted on 2009-09-11 at 03:35:49ID: 25308051

Guys,

Thank you for your help so far, here is the output;

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
  0 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  1 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  2     backup    wu       0 - 60796      931.46GB    (60797/0/0) 1953407610
  3 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  4 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  5 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  6 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  7 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)              0
  8       boot    wu       0 -     0       15.69MB    (1/0/0)          32130
  9 alternates    wm       1 -     2       31.38MB    (2/0/0)          64260


As you can see I have 930Gb on the backup partition, however I can't edit that to move to another partition. It just tells me I'm out of range

Thank you

 

by: deepslalliPosted on 2009-09-11 at 03:51:56ID: 25308107

Also,

This is the Gemetry of the disk I believe. I got it off another user of a linux machine

abel: SAMSUNG HD103UJ
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 82
sectors/cylinder: 5166
cylinders: 378150
total sectors: 1953525168
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0 # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0 # microseconds
drivedata: 0

 

by: RowleyPosted on 2009-09-14 at 04:48:03ID: 25324501

You cannot modify the backup partition - it defines the entire disk. If you want to define another partition then create one on an "empty" slice with a cylinder range of anywhere between 3 and 60796.

 

by: deepslalliPosted on 2009-09-29 at 08:31:58ID: 31634923

Thanks very much, I could change the other partition to 930GB, but the backup partition could not be changed.

Thank you

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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