How to Install Servers with Volumes Larger than 2TB

Booting from and Using UEFI / GPT Partitions

If your RAID or disk volume is larger than 2TB, you will need to use one of the following methods to use all of the capacity and to be able to boot from the volume:

• Use a standard MBR partitioning method, but create separate smaller volumes inside the RAID. Intel / LSI RAID cards allow you to create a 3TB RAID6 drive group, for example, but then create smaller volumes inside this, for example 500GB and 2.5TB. You would need to use a GPT volume for the 2.5TB volume to use all of the capacity, but could easily boot from the 500GB volume as this can be setup as a traditional MBR (master boot record) volume.
• Use a GPT partition. You will need an UEFI compatible BIOS and a GPT boot compatible operating system, which is normally recommended as being Windows 7 x64 or Server 2008R2 or later.

For more information, please see attached the Intel GPT white paper, available here, or attached.

Applies to:

• Server or Workstation systems with a hard drive or RAID volume larger than 2TB.