I recently received and installed a 3TB drive. Before formatting it, I zeroed the first GiB (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1024). Then formatted with gdisk.
Both gdisk and parted report the partition table correctly as containing a ~1MB (empty) sdb1 and ~2.7TB sdb2 (with a protective MBR). However, on boot, only one partition is recognized: the 1MB sdb1. And yet after running partprobe, sdb2 will magically appear. I've managed to work around this for now with a /etc/local.d/ file that just does "partprobe; mount /home" but I'd like to figure out the underlying cause... Has anyone ever run into this before? # grep sdb /var/log/messages Dec 9 01:38:49 precision kernel: [ 1.224703] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 5860533168 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) Dec 9 01:38:49 precision kernel: [ 1.228246] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 4096-byte physical blocks Dec 9 01:38:49 precision kernel: [ 1.230017] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Dec 9 01:38:49 precision kernel: [ 1.231765] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA Dec 9 01:38:49 precision kernel: [ 1.245054] sdb: sdb1 Dec 9 01:38:49 precision kernel: [ 1.247172] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk Dec 9 01:38:57 precision kernel: [ 23.777108] sdb: sdb1 Dec 9 01:38:58 precision kernel: [ 25.120921] EXT4-fs (sdb2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) # gdisk -l /dev/sdb GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1 Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/sdb: 5860533168 sectors, 2.7 TiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 0A8A7DB1-45D0-44DD-AACB-1A4957077401 Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 5860533134 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 4095 1024.0 KiB 8300 Linux filesystem 2 4096 5860533134 2.7 TiB 8300 Linux filesystem # parted -l [...] Model: ATA ST3000DM001-1ER1 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 3001GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 2097kB 1049kB Linux filesystem 2 2097kB 3001GB 3001GB ext4 Linux filesystem [...]