# Supporting the new 3TB drives

## darkphader

Anyone know exactly what is needed to support the new 3TB drives with Linux/Gentoo ?

http://goo.gl/pjgv

Some info claims a "modified version of Linux" is needed.

Thanks,

Chris

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## erik258

From what I can tell, you'll need a few things:

1) hardware support.  Your link seems to suggest this might be the hardest prerequisite to come by

2) GPT, at least if you want to boot from your huge partition (altough the benefit here is nonexistant - I _highly_ 

recommend putting /boot on it's own partition if your / partition is huge). 

3) Kernel support for 2TB+ block devices (CONFIG_LBDAF)

4) do some stuff, maybe, to get the most out of drives with 4k physical block sizes - which is supposed to be the new norm.  check out http://nxadm.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/4096-physical-block-size-drives/

What people mean by 'a modified version of linux' is unclear to me.  Most non-linuxers and even many linuxers fail to distinguish between 'linux' and 'linux distribution'.  The difference, however, is obviously huge.  I think gentoo can support all you need.  From what I can tell, the linux kernel (the only part of the system that can truly be called 'linux', since the userspace stuff mostely comes from GNU, hence the moniker 'GNU/Linux') is ready to support these big drives, and in fact, if you aren't booting into a 3TB partition (which is stupid anyway - LVM would be more appropriate for a physical disk of that immense size) I'm not sure you have to do anything to support a 3TB drive. 

But the real answer is, I don't know.  I've never gotten a chance to play with a 3TB drive.  Send me one, and I'll let you know if I can get it to work : )

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## platojones

 *erik258 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> But the real answer is, I don't know.  I've never gotten a chance to play with a 3TB drive.  Send me one, and I'll let you know if I can get it to work : )

 

Well, that won't happen since there are no 3TB drives yet.  Seagate won't have one available until later this year, at the earliest.

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