4.2.20 : Volume expansion will not work beyond 16 TB...

Amien wrote:

tranas:/var/log/frontview# resize2fs -pf /dev/c/c resize2fs 1.42.3 (14-May-2012) Filesystem at /dev/c/c is mounted on /c; on-line resizing required old_desc_blocks = 1045, new_desc_blocks = 1394 resize2fs: Permission denied to resize filesystem dmesg do EXT4_IOC_RESIZE_FS EXT4-fs warning (device dm-0): ext4_resize_fs:1675: No reserved GDT blocks, can' can this be fixed. anyone knows what is causing this?

Volume expansion cannot cross the 16 TiB boundary - the linux expansion tools fail because the block addresses aren't correctly expanded from 32 bits to 64. That limitation is listed in several places in the forum, and is also a limitation listed in the release notes.

If that is what is happening to you, the only way to overcome it is to do a factory reset with all disks in place - which requires all data and the configuration to be restored from backup.

On the other hand, if you already had a volume size that was > 16 TiB then it should have expanded (though the 8 TiB growth limit from the starting point still applies).

Just wanted to report that i followed the walkthough of mbe .. and it worked flawless. It took shorter then expected.

second "e2fsck -f /dev/c/c" gave me some Fix/Yes-es .. but all data seems in place.

I dont have to do this again then i'm adding the 6th and last harddisk right?

I have a fully populated Pro Business Edition with 6 x 2TB drives and my volume is 90% used so I am looking to replace those with 6 x 4TB drives.

Whilst I have the super critical data I absolutely require on my older NV+ which has 4 x 1TB drives, I simply don't have the backup space to enable me to perform a factory reset with the new drives and still retain all the data on the Pro.

Does anyone know somewhere in the UK (or EU) I can perhaps "hire" a Pro Business enclosure for a week (if such a thing is even possible) to overcome the expansion limitation this thread discusses? (Eg. migrate my existing drives to the hired enclosure, build my enclosure with the new 4TB drives and copy the data from the hired enclosure drives). Alternatively any other ideas would be helpful too which will let me start with 64bit structures and I don't lose any data.

Thankz.

No takers?

Did you find any 4Tb drives in the supported hardware list? I can't.

Zerro wrote:

I have a fully populated Pro Business Edition with 6 x 2TB drives and my volume is 90% used so I am looking to replace those with 6 x 4TB drives. Whilst I have the super critical data I absolutely require on my older NV+ which has 4 x 1TB drives, I simply don't have the backup space to enable me to perform a factory reset with the new drives and still retain all the data on the Pro. Does anyone know somewhere in the UK (or EU) I can perhaps "hire" a Pro Business enclosure for a week (if such a thing is even possible) to overcome the expansion limitation this thread discusses? (Eg. migrate my existing drives to the hired enclosure, build my enclosure with the new 4TB drives and copy the data from the hired enclosure drives). Alternatively any other ideas would be helpful too which will let me start with 64bit structures and I don't lose any data. Thankz.

there aren't any. Though if you search the forum you will find some folks that have used them successfully.

@Pittspilot - My inspiration came from this: http://duncandavidson.com/blog/2012/06/readynas_fully_loaded - and the fact that I'm running out of space.

Incidentally the 1TB drives I populated my NV+ with back in 2008 weren't on the supported list at that time but they made it on later. Same again with the current 2TB drives I have in my Pro. I always use Hitachi and Ultrastar's at that - can't get much better for SATA imho.

So I'm not that bothered about 4TB support (but thanks for the concern). I am still seeking possible answer/solution to my question.

Thankz.

Zerro wrote:

@Pittspilot - My inspiration came from this: http://duncandavidson.com/blog/2012/06/ ... lly_loaded - and the fact that I'm running out of space. Incidentally the 1TB drives I populated my NV+ with back in 2008 weren't on the supported list at that time but they made it on later. Same again with the current 2TB drives I have in my Pro. I always use Hitachi and Ultrastar's at that - can't get much better for SATA imho. So I'm not that bothered about 4TB support (but thanks for the concern). I am still seeking possible answer/solution to my question. Thankz.

And so am I! I filed a support request and Netgear's support is slow and poor, including addressing me by someone else's name. I'm looking to move off ReadyNAS as the support is poor and issues remain unresolved for a long time.

Cheers

Linux - ext4 (since 3.7) and e2fsprogs (since 1.42.7) now support 64-bit file systems

Info:
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.7#head-1fd57e16fc824eafd1bab789c5e1281bb5a0ccd5
http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/e2fsprogs-release.html#1.42.7

Are we going to see support from Netgear soon ?

Also remember in some cases like this new ext4, to take advantage of the changes, you need a fresh volume created on that version, not an older ext4 volume using new tools (may get corruption).