The purpose of this document is to explain how to create a large (>16T) partition in Linux. This is specifically CentOS 6.3 x86_64 and was done on 2014-02-20.
[root@theserver ~]# parted /dev/cciss/c0d1 GNU Parted 2.1 Using /dev/cciss/c0d1 Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) mklabel gpt Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/cciss/c0d1 will be destroyed and all data on this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue? Yes/No? Yes (parted) unit TB (parted) mkpart primary 0.00TB 18.00TB (parted) print Model: Compaq Smart Array (cpqarray) Disk /dev/cciss/c0d1: 20.0TB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 0.00TB 18.0TB 18.0TB primary (parted) quit Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab. (reverse-i-search)`mke': man ^Ce2fs (reverse-i-search)`mke2': man ^Ce2fs [root@theserver ~]# mkfs.ext4 -i 65536 /dev/cciss/c0d c0d0 c0d0p1 c0d0p2 c0d0p3 c0d1 c0d1p1 [root@theserver ~]# mkfs.ext4 -i 65536 /dev/cciss/c0d1p1 mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) mkfs.ext4: Size of device /dev/cciss/c0d1p1 too big to be expressed in 32 bits using a blocksize of 4096. [root@theserver ~]# man mkfs.ext4 [root@theserver ~]# mkfs.ext4 -b 65536 /dev/cciss/c0d1p1 Warning: blocksize 65536 not usable on most systems. mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) mkfs.ext4: 65536-byte blocks too big for system (max 4096) Proceed anyway? (y,n) n [root@theserver ~]# mkfs.xfs /dev/cciss/c0d1p1 meta-data=/dev/cciss/c0d1p1 isize=256 agcount=17, agsize=268435455 blks = sectsz=512 attr=2 data = bsize=4096 blocks=4394531072, imaxpct=5 = sunit=0 swidth=0 blks naming =version 2 bsize=4096 ascii-ci=0 log =internal log bsize=4096 blocks=521728, version=2 = sectsz=512 sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1 realtime =none extsz=4096 blocks=0, rtextents=0 [root@theserver ~]# umount /mnt/big/ umount: /mnt/big/: not mounted [root@theserver ~]# mount /dev/cciss/c0d1p1 /mnt/big [root@theserver ~]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/cciss/c0d0p3 412G 783M 390G 1% / tmpfs 32G 0 32G 0% /dev/shm /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 194M 25M 159M 14% /boot /dev/cciss/c0d1p1 17T 33M 17T 1% /mnt/big