GPT Disks

The technical support forum for Firestreamer (the virtual tape library).
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coombeshead
Posts: 1
Joined: 09 Mar 2011, 13:14

Post by coombeshead »

Are there any plans in the future to implement support for GPT disks?

Disk sizes are rapidly increasing and we now have a batch of 24 3TB drives that we intend to use with Firestreamer and DPM 2010. Currently a work around seems to be to use File Media as it can then read the 3TB drive. If we attempt to use Drive Media it does not recognise the file format. For now this is suitable but to not be restricted to drive letters it would be useful in the future to use Drive Media on these 3TB drives without losing 1TB in the process.

Other than that a good product.
jsf
Cristalink Support
Posts: 300
Joined: 29 Aug 2010, 09:03

Post by jsf »

Firestreamer only cares about partition tables for safety reasons, to minimize the risk of accidentally overwriting the user data that may be present on a disk. Once it decides to proceed, the existing partition table will be overwritten (deleted). The size of the partition doesn't matter. Firestreamer will use the entire disk up to 8TB. So you can format your disks with a single MBR partition of any size. You don't need GPT. We will update the documentation to make it clear.

Also, you don't have to use drive letters with file media. In fact, we don't recommend using drive letters. Use the Substitute Drive Letters command in the Media Layout Editor to replace drive letters with volume names.
Best regards,
John Smith
Cristalink Support
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