These days it is fairly common that I need to store and process large volumes of data. This isn’t possible with fdisk; you’ll need to turn to something like parted if you want to create a volume larger than 2 terabytes. Here’s how…
This does not have to be an Azure Linux VM of course…
Create the disk in Azure and attach it to your VM.
Log in to your VM, confirm the disk is recognized:
sladeedmonds@debian:~$ sudo dmesg|grep sdc [sudo] password for sladeedmonds: [ 2.972816] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] 4294967296 512-byte logical blocks: (2.20 TB/2.00 TiB) [ 2.980731] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] 4096-byte physical blocks [ 2.994619] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off [ 2.998700] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 0f 00 10 00 [ 3.000330] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA [ 3.019446] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk [ 1794.756493] sdc: sdc1
Good, the VM has detected the disk at /dev/sdc. Now you just need to partition the disk, create a filesystem on it, and then mount it.
First, partition the disk with parted by creating a label and then the primary partition.
sladeedmonds@debian:~$ sudo parted /dev/sdc GNU Parted 3.2 Using /dev/sdc Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) p Error: /dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label Model: Msft Virtual Disk (scsi) Disk /dev/sdc: 2199GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: unknown Disk Flags: (parted) mklabel New disk label type? GPT (parted) mkpart primary 0GB 2199GB (parted) p Model: Msft Virtual Disk (scsi) Disk /dev/sdc: 2199GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 2199GB 2199GB primary
Now, create the filesystem:
sladeedmonds@debian:~$ sudo mkfs /dev/sdc1 mke2fs 1.43.4 (31-Jan-2017) Found a gpt partition table in /dev/sdc1 Proceed anyway? (y,N) y Discarding device blocks: done Creating filesystem with 536870400 4k blocks and 134217728 inodes Filesystem UUID: 6178c34e-6763-42dc-a2d3-638958efaf61 Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968, 102400000, 214990848, 512000000 Allocating group tables: done Writing inode tables: done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
Finally, mount the drive:
sladeedmonds@debian:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /home/testdata sladeedmonds@debian:~$ df -h | grep sdc /dev/sdc1 2.0T 71M 1.9T 1% /home/testdata
Yay, done.
