Reaching Beyond Two-Terabyte Filesystems

Jeremy Andrews writes: "Peter Chubb posted a patch to the lkml, with which he's now managed to mount a 15 terabyte file (using JFS and the loopback device). Without the patch, Peter explains, "Linux is limited to 2TB filesystems even on 64-bit systems, because there are various places where the block offset on disc are assigned to unsigned or int 32-bit variables." Peter works on the Gelato project in Australia. His efforts include cleaning up Linux's large filesystem support, removing 32-bit filesystem limitations. When I asked him about the new 64-bit filesystem limits, he offered a comprehensive answer and this interesting link. The full thread can be found here on KernelTrap. Reaching beyond terabytes, beyond pentabytes, on into exabytes. I feel this sudden discontent with my meager 60 gigabyte hard drive..."

Comments

Re:NTFS

[Hyped01]

From what I understand, MS was promoting that NTFS was designed to have the capability of using disks that large. Not that it was WRITTEN to do so. Much like how the NT/XP line was designed to take advantage of 64 CPU per node systems - but only actually supports 8 (thanks to IBM's help they finally exceeded 4) and up to 32 CPU's in a 4 node system.

NTFS file system limits are a lot more real world and not equivalent to JFS's.

JFS was designed to handle up to 2 Petabytes but is limited to where it currently is (on Linux and OS/2 Warp).

Don't confuse MS design limits with MS real world released version actual limits.