Advice for 3tb harddisk

[Fred]

Hi guys,

I want to buy a new 3tb harddisk to connect to my rpi. I have read several threads about people who also had 3tb harddisks that were not (fully) recognized. I have also read reactions of people who had no problems with this (or solved them?).

I couldn't really get clear if it's possible to use a 3tb harddisk (to its full potential) when runnin xbian, is there someone here who could clarify this for me?

[mk01]

there is a kernel option on RPI

"Support for large (2TB+) block devices and files "

this is docs:
"CONFIG_LBDAF: │
│ │
│ Enable block devices or files of size 2TB and larger. │
│ │
│ This option is required to support the full capacity of large │
│ (2TB+) block devices, including RAID, disk, Network Block Device, │
│ Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and loopback. │
│ │
│ This option also enables support for single files larger than │
│ 2TB. │
│ │
│ The ext4 filesystem requires that this feature be enabled in │
│ order to support filesystems that have the huge_file feature │
│ enabled. Otherwise, it will refuse to mount in the read-write │
│ mode any filesystems that use the huge_file feature, which is │
│ enabled by default by mke2fs.ext4. │
│ │
│ The GFS2 filesystem also requires this feature. │
│ │
│ If unsure, say Y. │
│ │
│ Symbol: LBDAF [=y] │
│ Type : boolean │
│ Prompt: Support for large (2TB+) block devices and files │
│ Defined at block/Kconfig:26 │
│ Depends on: BLOCK [=y] && !64BIT │
│ Location: │
│ -> Enable the block layer (BLOCK [=y]) "

[Fred]

Okay thanks. So I should recompile the kernell then? I have never done that and could try it, but could it screw up my xbian install?
As a work around, could I divide the external disks in 2 partitions both smaller than 2tb?

[mk01]

put it on the issue list and ask curly to include this for next kernel update.

you can compile yourself, you wont harm if you use the .config for xbian and just change this one option. you will find it on github under xbianonpi/linux

[Koenkk]

It is already enabled: https://github.com/xbianonpi/xbian-patches/blob/master/kernel/.config#L192

What's the output of

Code:

zcat /proc/config.gz | grep LBDAF

[Fred]

It shows:

Code:

CONFIG_LBDAF=y

Thanks, I'm gonna give it a try then.