Multiterabyte Volume Support With EFI Disk Labels

This multiterabyte disk support is available only for systems that run a 64-bit kernel. This feature is new in the Solaris 9 4/03 release.

This Solaris release provides support for disks that are larger than 1 terabyte (Tbyte) on systems that run a 64-bit Solaris kernel.

The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) label provides support for physical disks and virtual disk volumes. The UFS file system is compatible with the EFI disk label, and you can create a UFS file system that is greater than 1 Tbyte. This release also includes updated disk utilities for managing disks that are greater than 1 Tbyte.

The EFI disk label differs from the VTOC disk label in the following ways:

• Support for disks that are greater than 1 Tbyte in size is provided.

• Slices 0–6, where slice 2 is just another slice, are provided.

• Partitions, or slices, cannot overlap with the primary or backup label, nor with any other partitions. The size of the EFI label is usually 34 sectors, so partitions start at sector 34. This feature means that no partition can start at sector zero (0).

• No cylinder, head, or sector information is stored in the label. Sizes are reported in blocks.

• Information that was stored in the alternate cylinders area, the last two cylinders of the disk, is now stored in slice 8.

For more information on using the EFI disk label, see the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration. This guide contains important information and restrictions that apply to using the EFI disk label with existing software products.

The Solaris Volume Manager software can also be used to manage disks greater than 1 Tbyte in this Solaris release. See Multiterabyte Volume Support in Solaris Volume Manager.