[parted-devel] 3TB drives available at retail; anyone tried parted with 'em?

[Phillip Susi]

On 9/22/2010 9:17 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
> I received a 3TB Seagate drive today.  Due to PC-clone boot issues,
> they don't sell it as an ordinary SATA drive, but you can buy the external
> USB drive and merely take it out of the box.  It's $200.  See:
> 
>   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148580
> 
> I'm writing to suggest that parted developers consider getting
> such a drive and testing with it.  It's the first ordinary SATA
> drive holding more than 2TB.
> 
> Here's a review of the drive (both as a SATA drive and in its native
> USB2 and optional USB3 interfaces):
> 
>   http://www.anandtech.com/show/3858/the-worlds-first-3tb-hdd-seagate-goflex-desk-3tb-review/

Interesting read, but there are a few errors in the article, which you
seem to have already hinted at.  The bios can boot a gpt disk just fine.
 The problem is with the boot loader.  The Windows boot loader expects
to find an active partition to chain load, which it won't with a stock
gpt disk.  As you found, you can however, use a hybrid where you expose
the Windows boot partition via the MBR to trick the windows boot loader
into working.  Now that I look at it though, it looks like the Windows
boot loader will fail if the partition starts beyond the 2tb mark, so
you might need a dedicated boot partition below that.  Grub2 does not
have that limitation, and will boot just fine from a gpt disk.