Re: >2TB disks

[jnemeth%victoria.tc.ca@localhost (John Nemeth)]

On Aug 6,  5:15am, Brad du Plessis wrote:
} 
} I've just started testing a new Seagate 1.5TB disk and have found a 
} problem in one of my own apps that reads the disklabel and copies the 
} d_secperunit u_int32_t value into a signed integer. It would seem that 
} now with the 1.5TB disk and 512 bytes/sector an unsigned 32-bit value is 
} required for the number of sectors. No problem then, I can fix my app. 
} It then occurred to me that once we hit >2TB disks there will be a 
} problem with the d_secperunit value in the disklabel with bytes per 
} sector at 512.
} 
} Please excuse my ignorance, is the 512 bytes/sector a pre-defined 
} property of the disk geometry or can it be configured? If it can't be 
} configured, how will >2TB disks be handled?

     Once upon a time, you used to be able to format disks with
different sector sizes, but I think those days are long behind us.  The
issue of >2TB disks has been discussed a number of times.  disklabel
doesn't work for them as you've noted.  You need to use gpt(8),
dkctl(8), and dk(4).

}-- End of excerpt from Brad du Plessis