On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 4:03 PM, Xav' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wednesday 27 August 2008 21:49:22 Benoit St-Pierre, you wrote : > > I though you can have up to 255 partitions/drive. The partitions would be > > in a RAID array so I wouldn't have to deal with them directly anyway. > > After little googling, it seems that the number of logical partitions may > be > unlimited as it is organized like chained lists, each logical partitions > indicating the size of the following... but under linux, the number of > partitions for an IDE drive is limited to 63 while for SCSI one it's 15. > Maybe > these limits were over, but i don't know enough about linux disk management > to > say anything more... > > > On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Xav' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Wednesday 27 August 2008 21:00:11 Benoit St-Pierre, you wrote : > > > > I'm in the planning stages of setting up a file server and am > > > > considering using RAID. > > > > > > > > My concern is that my drive sizes are mixed. I have two 500GB SATA > > > > > > drives, > > > > > > > a 320GB IDE and a 250GB IDE. > > > > > > > > I would like to set these up so that the maximum amount of disk space > > > > is usable, but still be able to recover from any one drive failing. I > > > > would also like to be able to add drives of any size as easily as > > > > possible. > > > > > > > > Is it possible to split each disk into a bunch of 10GB partitions, > > > > giving me 157 partitions in total, and specifying that I want to have > > > > 50 partitions worth of parity info so that if any 50 partitions go > bad > > > > (ie: one of the 500GB disks) the RAID can recover? Adding/replacing > > > > would be simple if I can change the amount of parity info to keep, > but > > > > I don't > > > > > > know > > > > > > > if this is actually possible. It looks as though spares need to be > > > > explicitly given so, if a disk with lots of spares goes down, it's > not > > > > going to work. > > > > > > AFAIK, it's not possible to have so much partitions under linux, but i > > > can't > > > remember the maximum of supported partitions... but good luck to manage > a > > > so > > > wide number of partitions ! > > > > > > > Another option I see is if I create 4x 250GB partitions (one on each > > > > > > drive) > > > > > > > in one RAID5 array, 3x 70GB partitions (on the 3 larger drives) in > > > > > > another > > > > > > > RAID5 array, and two 120GB in a RAID1 array. The RAID1 array reduces > my > > > > total available disk space a bit, which is less than ideal and > > > > adding/replacing disks would be more of a headache. > > > > > > IMHO, i think this could be a solution. This is possible using software > > > RAID as > > > it's in the kernel, and then reassemble created raid partitions in one > > > LVM volume group, so you can use partitions of any space ! > > > > > > > I remember reading something about using LVM and RAID to achieve > this, > > > > > > but > > > > > > > everything I've found has been for identical drives. > > > > > > > > Any suggestions? > > > > > > HTH. > > > > > > Xavier Parizet > > >
Yeah, it looks like 15 partitions is the max for SATA/SCSI drives, darn.
