Linux partition resize from MBR to > 2TB GPT

[yamangman]

I'm resizing a partition that was created with fdisk. I want to resize from a partition less than 2TB to one greater than 2TB so I would need to use a GPT partition table. My question is if I delete the old partition (BIOS-based MBR) and create the new partition (as GPT) will it corrupt the partition table for my old data and make it inaccessible?

Cheers

[directhex]

That's a bit of a fringe question. Congratulations!

The problem here is that it's not a MBR/GPT-based partition, it's a MBR/GPT-based partition table. And I don't know of a safe way to convert your partition table from one format to the other. So-called "hybrid" tables (where data exists for both formats) can't work, as the MBR table can't represent the >2TiB partition adequately

Have you considered using multiple <2TiB partitions and joining them in software via something like LVM?

[yamangman]

Well I expected as much a response to be honest . It was a difficult one to Google for, but what did turn up was pretty much indeterminate.

I have considered LVM, but next will be the carving support on the RAID card. I should have considered that first I think to be fair.

Thanks for your help.

[directhex]

Well I expected as much a response to be honest . It was a difficult one to Google for, but what did turn up was pretty much indeterminate.

I have considered LVM, but next will be the carving support on the RAID card. I should have considered that first I think to be fair.

Thanks for your help.

If you have no valuable data yet (crossed fingers), the carve a space, about 8 gig, for a MBR-based virtual disk to boot/install to, and the rest of your space as a >2TB GPT disk, for important data. Any distro will cope with the mix fine, and I did this myself last week

[skodabenz]

Try GPT fdisk - rodsbooks.com/gdisk . It has the ability to convert a disk from MBR (msdos disklabel) to GPT.

[oolon]

If you can carve it on your raid card you could also chop the disk space into 2000GiB sections, to allow for maximum compatibility, carving a boot space is also a good idea as suggested above is also. Generally its good idea to have the diskspace in a few sections so you don't have to everything off the array if you decide you want to carve some special spaces, but its of less use on a single computer raid card than a san, as you less likely to move things arround.