Debian hard drive support? [Solved]

[Huecuva]

Hi. Completely new to Debian, here. Most of my Linux experience is with Mint, as I run it on my HTPC. Since Mint does everything I need it to do in all purposes of computing aside from gaming, I decided to put Linux instead of Windows Server 2K8 on a server I am building. After some research, it came down to CentOS or Debian, and since Debian is similar to Mint, I decided to use it.

My motherboard is a Supermicro X7DVL-E. It has no UEFI support. I read somewhere in a forum thread dated 2011 that most Linux distros will support 3TB+ HDD without the need of a UEFI motherboard. Is this true? Does Debian support hard drives bigger than 2TB without UEFI? I would really love to put a RAID 1 with two 6TB hard drives in my server.

Also, whether that works or not; I've read that is possible to format a drive to NTFS in Linux, but I can't seem to find anything about formatting a RAID array into NTFS. Once my drives are set up as a RAID, can the RAID partition then be formatted as NTFS? Basically, is it possible to create an NTFS formatted RAID 1 in Debian? Unfortunately, since I'm a PC gamer, I am forced to continue using Windows on my main rig, which will obviously require access to my server.

Thanks.

[dilberts_left_nut]

, I am forced to continue using Windows on my main rig, which will obviously require access to my server

The filesystem on the drive is irrelevant if you are accessing it remotely, via cifs or such. Win will see the network filesystem, not the physical one.

[alan stone]

I read somewhere in a forum thread dated 2011 that most Linux distros will support 3TB+ HDD without the need of a UEFI motherboard. Is this true? Does Debian support hard drives bigger than 2TB without UEFI?

Some pieces of the puzzle...

HDD Support for 2.5TB, 3TB Drives and Beyond

2 Terabyte Drives and Beyond - Using All That Space

The ability to use the full capacity of these drives is dependent on the factors listed below –

· BIOS capability
· Storage Controller firmware
· Operating System

All three play a part in being able to fully utilize >2TB drives.

Everything You Need to Know About 3TB Hard Drives

Installing a 3TB Drive

If you have 64-bit Vista, 64-bit Windows 7, a Mac, 64-bit Linux, or in some cases 32-bit Linux, check to see if your system's BIOS supports 3TB. If doesn't, you'll need to obtain a BIOS update or to buy a newer motherboard that supports 3TB.

Comparison of file systems
See the "Maximum volume size" column

Trying to understand linux support for 4TB hard disk drive on legacy BIOS

I currently have HDDs <= 2TB so can't confirm about Debian.

EDIT: Some further information, also about RAID setup: How to Break the 2TB (2 TeraByte) File System Limit

[buzzin]

The most important thing isn't UEFI, but something that came around the same time and is linked to it, GPT
You don't need UEFI for GPT, I have used it quite a few time on BIOS systems (UEFI is the successor to BIOS)

There are several guides available on how to partition the drive using GPT, but there are a few things to remember:
GPT won't work with older versions of Windows, should you need to access it.
Create a small first system partition for GRUB. (find a guide that includes this!)
It might be needed to do the partitioning outside of the debian installer.....I can't say if the installer works on this, as I always partition disk before I start the installer.

I have a guide on file somewhere, unfortunatly I can't access anything right now, as the harddisk of my webserver died

[phenest]

The most important thing isn't UEFI, but something that came around the same time and is linked to it, GPT
You don't need UEFI for GPT, I have used it quite a few time on BIOS systems (UEFI is the successor to BIOS)

@OP

If you're not using the drives yet, why not test them on another non-EFI system with Debian Live.

[Huecuva]

, I am forced to continue using Windows on my main rig, which will obviously require access to my server

The filesystem on the drive is irrelevant if you are accessing it remotely, via cifs or such. Win will see the network filesystem, not the physical one.

Really? Because everything I've read online about Linux/Windows networking says it's really hard to get Windows to read an ext3 or ext4 partition. Even if it is possible, I'd rather just avoid the fuss. I have an NTFS storage drive in my Mint HTPC right now and it's working quite nicely, my gaming rig is able to access it. What I need to know is, once my hard drives are set up in the RAID 1, will NTFSProgs and GPARTED work?

I read somewhere in a forum thread dated 2011 that most Linux distros will support 3TB+ HDD without the need of a UEFI motherboard. Is this true? Does Debian support hard drives bigger than 2TB without UEFI?

Some pieces of the puzzle...

Thanks. I will have a look at those links when I have some time later today.

The most important thing isn't UEFI, but something that came around the same time and is linked to it, GPT
You don't need UEFI for GPT, I have used it quite a few time on BIOS systems (UEFI is the successor to BIOS)

There are several guides available on how to partition the drive using GPT, but there are a few things to remember:
GPT won't work with older versions of Windows, should you need to access it.
Create a small first system partition for GRUB. (find a guide that includes this!)
It might be needed to do the partitioning outside of the debian installer.....I can't say if the installer works on this, as I always partition disk before I start the installer.

I have a guide on file somewhere, unfortunatly I can't access anything right now, as the harddisk of my webserver died

I've already looked up guides about how to activate drives as GPT instead of MBR and set up a RAID and format drives in Linux. I know all about how MBR can't support drives >2TB and GPT is required for bigger ones. What I don't know is if UEFI is also required. I actually already have a Windows 7 software RAID 1 set up in my gaming rig with two 4TB hard drives but it is a much newer computer and the motherboard supports UEFI. I want to move all storage to my server. Even though the post above yours states

If you have 64-bit Vista, 64-bit Windows 7, a Mac, 64-bit Linux, or in some cases 32-bit Linux, check to see if your system's BIOS supports 3TB. If doesn't, you'll need to obtain a BIOS update or to buy a newer motherboard that supports 3TB.

you say that it is possible to use 3TB hard drives in a BIOS environment with just GPT? I hope you're right. I'm going to have a separate OS drive in the server and I plan on installing Debian first and setting up the RAID after. In all my research, it just seems easier that way than trying to set up the RAID during installation. Unfortunately, my X7DVL-E is already running the latest BIOS, there are no updates.

The most important thing isn't UEFI, but something that came around the same time and is linked to it, GPT
You don't need UEFI for GPT, I have used it quite a few time on BIOS systems (UEFI is the successor to BIOS)

@OP

If you're not using the drives yet, why not test them on another non-EFI system with Debian Live.

That's actually not a bad idea. The drives are already in my server but they haven't even been so much as powered on since I got them. I haven't even installed Debian in the server yet. It might even save me some headache if I go in before installing and set the drives up as GPT, set up the RAID with Debian Live, maybe? If it all works, that is. If I have to install NTFSProgs and GPARTED to format NTFS I won't be able to do that until after installation, but that's not a big deal.

Thanks for the answers, guys. Any further help is appreciated.

[Huecuva]

So, it turns out Debian xfce looks nothing like Mint xfce. This is disappointing, but I will stick with it for now.

I installed it from USB and whenever I try to apt-get anything it asks me to put in my live CD and press enter. I don't have a live CD. The server doesn't even have an optical drive. I am connected to a network and have internet access. Why does it want a CD?

The good news is that the Debian installer saw my storage drives as 6TB drives, so I imagine I should be able to set up a 6TB RAID 1 once I manage to get them set up as GPT.

[dilberts_left_nut]

Comment out the CD entry in your sources.list.

[Huecuva]

Comment out the CD entry in your sources.list.

That solved that problem. Thank you.

Just installed gparted and gave both 6TB drives GPT partition tables. I'm going to reinstall Debian tomorrow though, I screwed up and left a second OS drive I already had Mint installed on connected in the machine and it dual booted them. I don't want that. I will disconnect it and reinstall and then continue configuring my RAID. Now I just hope I can format my RAID into NTFS.

[Huecuva]

Mdadm seems to get stuck in this initial configuration screen that I can't get past and it ties up all of apt when I try to install anything else it tells me dpkg has been interrupted and gives me a command to run. When I run that command it simply reopens this config screen that I can't do anything with.

It looks like I'm supposed to be able to click on <Ok> or press Enter or something but nothing works.

Anyone know what's supposed to happen here?

[dilberts_left_nut]

Push TAB.

Are you trying to put your / on an NTFS filesystem?

[Huecuva]

Ah, TAB, of course! Thank you.

I am not putting / on an NTFS file system. Only my storage RAID will be NTFS. Debian is already installed on a completely separate hard drive which will not be included in the RAID.

When I use fdisk to set the file system type, every tutorial I can find online says use "fd" to set it to "Linux RAID Autodetect" yet when I set it to fd it says it is unchanged and when I list all types, there is no "Linux RAID Autodetect" option, only "Linux RAID" and it is number 21. Is this the same thing?

Alright, after I ran

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

and

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sudo fdisk /dev/sdc

and set both to "Linux RAID" and wrote the changes to the disks, and then ran

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sudo mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=mirror --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

to create md0 as the RAID dive, the RAID appears to have been created, as GPARTED now shows a drive called md0 which was unallocated. I had to give it a GPT partition table and then create an NTFS partition on it. However, there is no indication this drive exists in the file system browser. I have created a folder /home/mike/Database to be the mount point and then I ran

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/md0 /home/mike/Database

and I am confronted with

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/md0, missing codepage or helper program or other error

In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so.

whatever any of that means.



So now there is a device in GPARTED called /dev/md0p1 and it is formatted NTFS and it is flagged as msftdata. I don't know what any of this means.

EDIT AGAIN:

So I've run

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/md0p1 /home/mike/database

and it seems to have worked. I have added to fstab

Code: Select all

 /dev/md0p1     /home/mike/database     ntfs        defaults      0       1

Am I done? Does the fact that it wasn't set up as fd or "Linux RAID Autodetect" make a difference or is that the same thing as "Linux RAID"? Whenever I run that --detail command the Resync status is very slowly counting up. It's at like 10% now. Is that it? Does it need to be allowed to finish resyncing?

[Huecuva]

Well, I guess this is solved now. I don't really remember most of what I did to make it work. Followed a bunch of tutorials. Had to set up Samba and edit some config files. Anyway. it's working now. Now I just have to get my Teamspeak server running and figure out what I'm going to use to VNC.