500gb USB drive --rmformat

[d...@snakebrook.com]

Hi, I have a pair of 500gb USB drives that I am attempting to use with
Solaris 10:

SunOS aspen 5.10 Generic_118822-25 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60

This would be the 01/06 release, unpatched.

using rmformat, I feed it the folowing file:

slices: 0 = 0, 20, "wm", "home" :
1 = 20, 10, "wm" :
2 = 0, 500GB, "wm", "backup" :
6 = 30, 10, "wm", "usr"

rmformat returns the following:

# rmformat -s sata /dev/rdsk/c2t0d1s2
Backup slice extends beyond size of media
media size : 586067265 sectors

However, if I specify 200GB in the file, it seems to work. I can
specify up about 280GB before I get the "Backup slice extends beyond
size of media" error message.

Additionally, if I run "newfs" on the drive, it gets formatted as a
300gb drive.

So it appears that either way, rmformat or newfs, can only see 300gn of
this USB drive.

Is there some patch that one needs to see large USB drive greater tan
300gb? Or do I need to do something else wit the rmformat before one
can see 500gb?

Thanks, Jack.

[Paul Gress]

Why not try the ZFS. I did this on an 100 gig 2.5" external hard drive.
Works great. No slices. I also set it up for "on the fly" data
compression. I copied about 34 gigs of data and only took up about 12
gigs of space. Fast. You don't even know data compression is on. It
mounts automatically at boot, or if you hot plug it you need to manually
mount it (Volmgt does not recognize it).

It was simple to set up:

# /usr/sbin/zpool create volumename c2t0d1

To turn compression on:

# /usr/sbin/zfs set compression=on volumename

To mount it:

# /usr/sbin/zpool import volumename

To unmount it:

# /usr/sbin/zpool export volumename

Just works.

I'm thinking of using it on my USB Flash drive to almost double it's
capacity (won't work on Windows PC's and soon on MAC OS 10.5)

[d...@snakebrook.com]

Paul Gress wrote:
> d...@snakebrook.com wrote:
> > Hi, I have a pair of 500gb USB drives that I am attempting to use with
> > Solaris 10:
> >

>

> Why not try the ZFS. I did this on an 100 gig 2.5" external hard drive.

That's not the direction I want to head at the moment. Besides, I doubt
it will solve the problem. If the driver says there's 300gb on a drive,
that's all you're gonna get. 300gb. I need to be able to see 500gb on a
500gb drive. ZFS is an awesome Filesystem, but playing tricks like this
with ZFS, if that's possible, isn't going to get me my missing 200gb
back.

I need to get that missing 200gb somehow, if it's possible.

Thanks, Jack.

[ary...@spasu.net]

Have you tried to enter the geometry by hand using "format -e" menus?
I had to do it with 320 GB IDE drive connected to Blade 1000 Firewire
port
over IDE/Firewire bridge.

Firstly, what prtvtoc says about geometry?

Regards,
Andrei

[rpa...@eas.slu.edu]

That's the path I was going to suggest. It maybe that the USB-IDE
converter does feed the correct information back to rmformat and you
may have to use format with a manually entered geometry

[ary...@spasu.net]

>
> That's the path I was going to suggest. It maybe that the USB-IDE
> converter does feed the correct information back to rmformat and you
> may have to use format with a manually entered geometry

but in my case, prtvtoc did give me the correct geometry information,
so I guess the things got broken not at hardware level.