Poweredge T310 problems with drives > 2.2TB

Hi,

Can you private message me the service tag so we can get some additional information?

Are the drives in a raid array?

Are the drives in passthrough mode on the controller and you are going to use software raid? What does lsblk show?

Larger than 2TB requires 64 Bit UEFI class 2.3.1 or higher BIOS and 64 bit OS.

PERC H200 does not support SATA only SAS AND does not support greater than 2TB.

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

· BIOS capability
· Storage Controller firmware
· Operating System

The 2-TB barrier is the result of this 32-bit limitation. Because the maximum number that can be represented by using 32-bits is 4,294,967,295, this translates to 2.199 TB of capacity by using 512-byte sectors (approximately 2.2 TB). Therefore, a capacity beyond 2.2 TB is not addressable.

The Limitations also apply to INTEL ICH Raid as well as Hardware Raid.

To make more bits available for addressing, the storage device must be initialized by using 64 Bit UEFI GPT. This partitioning scheme lets up to 64 bits of information be used within logical sectors.

To meet these conditions, the following prerequisites apply:

• The disk must be initialized by using GPT.
• The system RAID firmware AND BIOS must use 64 BIT UEFI.
• The Operating System must be one of the following (64-bit only, but including all SKU editions):
•  64 BIt Linux kernel version v2.6.35 or newer is required to support >2TiB disk drives.

VMWare ESX has some specific limitations at 2 TB: ESX does not support 2 terabyte LUN sizes

IMPORTANT NOTE! Only the Dell H700 and H800 currently support the 3TB drives  - NO earlier controllers, such as the PERC4/5/6, SAS5/6 (or ANY other Dell controller not mentioned) have this support and in some cases, even though you may be able to see the drive, this has NOT been tested or validated, so possible data loss could be experienced. ONLY use the Dell H700 and H800 with the proper firmware to ensure a tested and validated >2TB solution! For non-Dell controllers, contact the controller vendor for their support statement on >2TB drives.

Dell H700/800 and H200 will only support SAS drives.

Dell PERC H700 and H800 –

The following firmware revision (or later) must be applied on the Storage Controller Cards to obtain support for >2 TB drives. The firmware release numbers and revisions are below:

For SAS drives >2TB: 7.1 FW A02/12.3.0-0032
R269683 – H800; A02 ( listed as DELL_PERC-H800-ADAPTER_XX_XXXXXXX.exe)
R269684 – H700I: A02 ( listed as DELL_PERC-H700-INTEGRATED_XX_XXXXXXX.exe )
R269685 – H700A; A02 ( listed as DELL_PERC-H700-ADAPTER_XX_XXXXXXX.exe )
R269686 – H700M; A02 ( listed as DELL_PERC-H700-MODULAR_XX_XXXXXXX.exe)

New filesystems are generally created with the option -O 64bit This allows them to span significantly greater (1024 PiB instead of 16 TiB) volumes. Older filesystems, which were created before this became the default, previously lacked the option to upgrade the address length to 64 bit.

Though not part of Ubuntu Ubuntu 16.04 (2016-04-21) was released with e2fsprogs Version 1.42.12 (2014-08-25), this has been remedied in the latest release of e2fsprogs Version 1.43 (2016-05-17).

older kernels do not contain stable support for 64bit ext4

EFI GUID Partition support works on both 32bit and 64bit platforms.
You must include 64 BITGPT support in the kernel to use GPT.
If you don’t add GPT support in Linux kernel, after rebooting the file system will no longer be mountable, or the GPT table will get corrupted.

With Debian or Ubuntu Linux, you MUST recompile the kernel.
Set CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION to y to compile this feature.

$ sudo gdisk /dev/sdb

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1
Partition table scan:
  MBR: not present
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: not present
Creating new GPT entries.
Command (? for help):

What is exactly the passthrough mode and where can I set it up?

Yes I want to do a software raid.

lsblk output:

Yesterday a plugged a drive into a SATA-Port and then it showed me the 3TB.

So it has to be something with the controller, right?

I checked my BIOS version, which is 1.5.2. So pretty old, but since i do not use the drives for booting it should not be a problem!?