Need to make a single 3TB partition

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno wrote:
Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
stupid to pull it off.

Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
support this on USB or Firewire drives.

Well, it does make some sense. Personally, I think the idea
of "removable" devices is fundamentally flawed, and mounting and
umounting as in Linux/unix is the far better approach. Bit apparently
MS customers just yank out devices if it is mechanically possible.
That could be a deisaster if the devices are RAIDed/


Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
Maybe give this pice of trash back?

Is it possible that there is a BIOS limitation, beyond 2TB? The
motherboard I'm using is a rather plain desktop mobo, it may not be
expecting such huge devices to join in?

USB does not go over the BIOS, at least not in Linux. 2TB is 41
bit. No limit on byte level I can see. Number of sectors would
be 32. Ah, I think I see the problem. USB is using the storage
SCSI command set. It has either 32 bit or 64 bit for the sector
number. If the enclosure is resonably current, it should
support 64 bit sector numbers. Linux need compiled in kernel
support for large block devices to be able to handle block
devices 2TB. This support has been there for some years, but
may be missing from your kernel. The config option is
CONFIG_LBDAF and found under "enable block layer" in 2.6.32.

I have no idea whether XP supports 64 bit sector numbers, but
apparently not.

USB storage supports both SCSI 32 and SCSI 64 bit sector numbers.

Does the Windows USB mass storage driver treat them as SCSI devices?

Yes., but may be missing support for 64 bit sector numbers.

Oh, BTW, when I tried spanning them through Windows' spanning wizard
(during initial setup prior to receiving the error message), it accepted
the combined size as 2794 GB, however it would only allow a filesystem
size of half of that to be created, 1397 GB! That's also the exact size
of each individual drive. So it looks like it wasn't going to accept
being spanned over two disks no matter what.

I also tried using Linux's LVM to do this, and it created similarly
sloppy results. I don't think it's got anything to do with any
limitations that the enclosure has, as the problems seem to be universal
throughout Windows and Linux.

See above. I have had the large block device support enabled
for ages in my own kernels, no negative effect so far.

Arno
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Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote
JW wrote

Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
See
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/

Well according to that, it looks like (at least as of Windows 2000)
dynamic disks weren't supported on USB or Firewire disks.

It wouldnt be surprising if it isnt supported in any version of win,
essentially because thats very risky with removable drives.


Now the question is what would let me span these two drives together?

I think it is an OS issue, see my other posting.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

Yousuf Khan wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Yousuf Khan wrote
JW wrote

Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
See
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/

Well according to that, it looks like (at least as of Windows 2000)
dynamic disks weren't supported on USB or Firewire disks.

It wouldnt be surprising if it isnt supported in any version of win,
essentially because thats very risky with removable drives.

Now the question is what would let me span these two drives together?

The drive itself clearly does that. You need to ask the manufacturer why
it doesnt appear as the full size, presumably its a common problem.

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:58:28 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote
JW wrote

Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
See
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/

Well according to that, it looks like (at least as of Windows 2000)
dynamic disks weren't supported on USB or Firewire disks.

It wouldnt be surprising if it isnt supported in any version of win,
essentially because thats very risky with removable drives.


Now the question is what would let me span these two drives together?

Yousuf Khan

You might have some luck by using a true RAID controller, perhaps with
eSATA port(s), rather than messing with USB, unless this thing needs
to be semi-portable. If you went with RAID the drive enclosure would
still be used as a physical home and to supply power to the drives,
but the data connection would be to the RAID controller instead of
USB.

Arno wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno wrote:
Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
stupid to pull it off.

Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
support this on USB or Firewire drives.

Well, it does make some sense. Personally, I think the idea
of "removable" devices is fundamentally flawed, and mounting and
umounting as in Linux/unix is the far better approach. Bit apparently
MS customers just yank out devices if it is mechanically possible.
That could be a deisaster if the devices are RAIDed/


Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
Maybe give this pice of trash back?

Is it possible that there is a BIOS limitation, beyond 2TB? The
motherboard I'm using is a rather plain desktop mobo, it may not be
expecting such huge devices to join in?

USB does not go over the BIOS, at least not in Linux. 2TB is 41
bit. No limit on byte level I can see. Number of sectors would
be 32. Ah, I think I see the problem. USB is using the storage
SCSI command set. It has either 32 bit or 64 bit for the sector
number. If the enclosure is resonably current, it should
support 64 bit sector numbers. Linux need compiled in kernel
support for large block devices to be able to handle block
devices 2TB. This support has been there for some years, but
may be missing from your kernel. The config option is
CONFIG_LBDAF and found under "enable block layer" in 2.6.32.

I asked the same question to Janos Mathe, the developer of HD Sentinel,
he believes that the USB-SATA chipset is to blame here. These are his words:

It seems it is an overflow issue in addressing.
I'm sure it is not related to BIOS as the BIOS would only cause troubles
on disks which are under its control (for example if they were connected
to the motherboard and you'd try to boot from it). USB devices are controlled by the USB drivers of the OSes (Windows/Linux).

I suspect the problem is related to the JMicron USB-ATA bridge which
translates the USB packets to ATA commands sent to the SATA drives.
I quickly checked the specs of this chip at http://www.jmicron.com/PDF/JM20336/JM20336.pdf
but as I see, JMicron do not mention the maximum drive capacity to be used.
However, I think at the time of release (2005) they were not prepared
for such BIG concatenated array and that's why the LBA addressing wraps around over 2 TB.
If I can help, please let me know.

So it looks like there may be nothing that can be done here.

Yousuf Khan

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:40:32 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

Arno wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno wrote:
Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
stupid to pull it off.

Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
support this on USB or Firewire drives.

Well, it does make some sense. Personally, I think the idea
of "removable" devices is fundamentally flawed, and mounting and
umounting as in Linux/unix is the far better approach. Bit apparently
MS customers just yank out devices if it is mechanically possible.
That could be a deisaster if the devices are RAIDed/


Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
Maybe give this pice of trash back?

Is it possible that there is a BIOS limitation, beyond 2TB? The
motherboard I'm using is a rather plain desktop mobo, it may not be
expecting such huge devices to join in?

USB does not go over the BIOS, at least not in Linux. 2TB is 41
bit. No limit on byte level I can see. Number of sectors would
be 32. Ah, I think I see the problem. USB is using the storage
SCSI command set. It has either 32 bit or 64 bit for the sector
number. If the enclosure is resonably current, it should
support 64 bit sector numbers. Linux need compiled in kernel
support for large block devices to be able to handle block
devices 2TB. This support has been there for some years, but
may be missing from your kernel. The config option is
CONFIG_LBDAF and found under "enable block layer" in 2.6.32.

I asked the same question to Janos Mathe, the developer of HD Sentinel,
he believes that the USB-SATA chipset is to blame here. These are his words:

It seems it is an overflow issue in addressing.
I'm sure it is not related to BIOS as the BIOS would only cause troubles
on disks which are under its control (for example if they were connected
to the motherboard and you'd try to boot from it). USB devices are controlled by the USB drivers of the OSes (Windows/Linux).

I suspect the problem is related to the JMicron USB-ATA bridge which
translates the USB packets to ATA commands sent to the SATA drives.
I quickly checked the specs of this chip at http://www.jmicron.com/PDF/JM20336/JM20336.pdf
but as I see, JMicron do not mention the maximum drive capacity to be used.
However, I think at the time of release (2005) they were not prepared
for such BIG concatenated array and that's why the LBA addressing wraps around over 2 TB.
If I can help, please let me know.

So it looks like there may be nothing that can be done here.

Yousuf Khan

Was my suggestion (RAID controller versus USB controller) considered?

On 2010-03-30, Arno wrote:


In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno wrote:
Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
stupid to pull it off.

Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
support this on USB or Firewire drives.

Well, it does make some sense. Personally, I think the idea
of "removable" devices is fundamentally flawed, and mounting and
umounting as in Linux/unix is the far better approach. Bit apparently
MS customers just yank out devices if it is mechanically possible.
That could be a deisaster if the devices are RAIDed/

Any good RAID setup is going to have removable devices. That's kind
of part of the point of the whole thing. So the fact that you can
disconnect a USB drive isn't a terribly distinctive thing here. It really
shouldn't matter.

[deletia]

--
Apple: because TRANS.TBL is an mp3 file. It really is! |||
/ | \

Char Jackson wrote:
Was my suggestion (RAID controller versus USB controller) considered?


The problem with putting the drives through a RAID controller is that
I'd have to bring these drives into the computer case and and connect
them permanently. I am trying to keep them as backup drives, therefore
they need to remain in the external case.

JEDIDIAH wrote:
Any good RAID setup is going to have removable devices. That's kind
of part of the point of the whole thing. So the fact that you can
disconnect a USB drive isn't a terribly distinctive thing here. It really
shouldn't matter.


Well, they don't want the drives to be *that* removable. There's a
difference between being swappable and portable. USB drives would be
considered portable.

Yousuf Khan

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno wrote:
Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
stupid to pull it off.

Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
support this on USB or Firewire drives.

Well, it does make some sense. Personally, I think the idea
of "removable" devices is fundamentally flawed, and mounting and
umounting as in Linux/unix is the far better approach. Bit apparently
MS customers just yank out devices if it is mechanically possible.
That could be a deisaster if the devices are RAIDed/


Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
Maybe give this pice of trash back?

Is it possible that there is a BIOS limitation, beyond 2TB? The
motherboard I'm using is a rather plain desktop mobo, it may not be
expecting such huge devices to join in?

USB does not go over the BIOS, at least not in Linux. 2TB is 41
bit. No limit on byte level I can see. Number of sectors would
be 32. Ah, I think I see the problem. USB is using the storage
SCSI command set. It has either 32 bit or 64 bit for the sector
number. If the enclosure is resonably current, it should
support 64 bit sector numbers. Linux need compiled in kernel
support for large block devices to be able to handle block
devices 2TB. This support has been there for some years, but
may be missing from your kernel. The config option is
CONFIG_LBDAF and found under "enable block layer" in 2.6.32.

I asked the same question to Janos Mathe, the developer of HD Sentinel,
he believes that the USB-SATA chipset is to blame here. These are his words:

It seems it is an overflow issue in addressing.
I'm sure it is not related to BIOS as the BIOS would only cause troubles
on disks which are under its control (for example if they were connected
to the motherboard and you'd try to boot from it). USB devices are controlled by the USB drivers of the OSes (Windows/Linux).

I suspect the problem is related to the JMicron USB-ATA bridge which
translates the USB packets to ATA commands sent to the SATA drives.
I quickly checked the specs of this chip at http://www.jmicron.com/PDF/JM20336/JM20336.pdf
but as I see, JMicron do not mention the maximum drive capacity to be used.
However, I think at the time of release (2005) they were not prepared
for such BIG concatenated array and that's why the LBA addressing wraps around over 2 TB.
If I can help, please let me know.

So it looks like there may be nothing that can be done here.

Yousuf Khan

Hmm. Could be right. Missing large block device support in Linux
should not make it show up as smaller, just prevent it from being
used in its full capacity. Seems indeed that you are out of luck.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans