Creating a partition greater than 2TB

The standard Linux partitioning tool, fdisk, does not support partition greater than 2TB. Instead, use the GNU parted tool. Note: The maximum partition size for the EXT3 file system is 8TB.

For older Linux distributions that do not include parted, the software can be downloaded here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/

Here is a sample session:

  1. # parted /dev/sda
    
  2. create the drive label
    (parted)mklabel gpt
    
  3. print the disk geometry in megabytes.
    (parted)p
    

    The disk geometry for the disk array will be displayed. Here is a sample output:

    Disk geometry for /dev/sda: 0.000-2622488.000 megabytes
    
  4. partition the disk
    (parted) mkpart
    Partition type?  [primary]?
    File system type?  [ext2]? ext3
    Start? 0
    End? 2622488
    

    Note: The end value does not represent the number of cylinder. Rather, it represents the partition size in MB. This value is extracted in step #2.

    Note: When running parted under Fedora Core 6 or higher, enter '100%' as the value for End.

  5. save and quit the program
    (parted)q