GPT, beyond the MBR (I)

Have you ever wondered what are the limits of the MBR (Master Boot Record)? I mean, the maximum size of a partition or a entire hard drive able to be handled. The answer is 2.2 TB.

Below you can observe the structure of the MBR (a total size of 512 bytes, where each row is 32 bytes).

root@ubuntu-server:~# dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 | xxd -g 4 -c 32
0000000: eb639010 8ed0bc00 b0b80000 8ed88ec0 fbbe007c bf0006b9 0002f3a4 ea210600  .c.................|.........!..
0000020: 00bebe07 3804750b 83c61081 fefe0775 f3eb16b4 02b001bb 007cb280 8a74018b  ....8.u........u.........|...t..
0000040: 4c02cd13 ea007c00 00ebfe00 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000080 01000000  L.....|.........................
0000060: 00000000 fffa9090 f6c28074 05f6c270 7402b280 ea797c00 0031c08e d88ed0bc  ...........t...pt....y|..1......
0000080: 0020fba0 647c3cff 740288c2 52bb1704 80270374 06be887d e81701be 057cb441  . ..d|<.t...R....'.t...}.....|.A
00000a0: bbaa55cd 135a5272 3d81fb55 aa753783 e1017432 31c08944 04408844 ff894402  ..U..ZRr=..U.u7...t21..D.@.D..D.
00000c0: c7041000 668b1e5c 7c66895c 08668b1e 607c6689 5c0cc744 060070b4 42cd1372  ....f..\|f.\.f..`|f.\..D..p.B..r
00000e0: 05bb0070 eb76b408 cd13730d f6c2800f 84d000be 937de982 00660fb6 c68864ff  ...p.v....s..........}...f....d.
0000100: 40668944 040fb6d1 c1e20288 e888f440 8944080f b6c2c0e8 02668904 66a1607c  @f.D...........@.D.......f..f.`|
0000120: 6609c075 4e66a15c 7c6631d2 66f73488 d131d266 f774043b 44087d37 fec188c5  f..uNf.\|f1.f.4..1.f.t.;D.}7....
0000140: 30c0c1e8 0208c188 d05a88c6 bb00708e c331dbb8 0102cd13 721e8cc3 601eb900  0........Z....p..1......r...`...
0000160: 018edb31 f6bf0080 8ec6fcf3 a51f61ff 265a7cbe 8e7deb03 be9d7de8 3400bea2  ...1..........a.&Z|..}....}.4...
0000180: 7de82e00 cd18ebfe 47525542 20004765 6f6d0048 61726420 4469736b 00526561  }.......GRUB .Geom.Hard Disk.Rea
00001a0: 64002045 72726f72 0d0a00bb 0100b40e cd10ac3c 0075f4c3 ab9d0600 00008020  d. Error...........<.u......... 
00001c0: 2100831a 3b1f0008 00000098 0700003b 1b1f051f d00ffea7 07000250 b8000000  !...;..........;...........P....
00001e0: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 000055aa  ..............................U.

The first 440 bytes contains the bootstrap code area, which takes care of starting up the operating system present on the active partition. Then, it is the disk signature, a 4-byte number that is randomly generated when the MBR is first created. It is an identifier which applies to the whole hard drive (not a single partition). After that, there are a couple of bytes set to null, and next, the partition table.

The partition table is made up of four entries of 16 bytes each which define the position and size of the sectors (LBA or Logical Block Addressing). In order to work around the problem of having just four partitions, these primary partitions can contain an arbitrary number of logical partitions. This schema can lead to problems, because some operating systems can only boot from primary partitions.

On the other hand, how do I work out the figure of 2.2 TB as top size for a partition? In conjunction with the universal sector size of 512 bytes and the 32-bit LBA pointers used by MBR partitions, you have ( 2^32 ) - 1 sectors * 512 bytes per sector.

(Also say that the MBR ends with the sequence of two bytes 0x55AA).

On account of the current size of hard drives and RAID technologies, the problem is really serious and will become more severe over time. In order to overcome it, the GUID partition table (GPT) is the natural successor to the MBR partition table.

GPT, supported on Linux since the 2.6.25 kernel version, uses 128-byte LBA modern tables, so therefore it is possible to have hard drives up to 8 ZB addressable for a disk with a 512-byte sector size. In addition, GPT can manage up to 128 partitions, so there is no need for extended or logical partitions. If you are interested, you can read up more about this topic on the Internet, since the aim of this article is to put forward how to manage this technology on Linux (also mention that for my tests, I used an Ubuntu Server 12.04 distribution).

First of all, point out that fdisk does not work with this partitioning scheme, but the good news is that can be got over with other Linux tools, such as parted. Keeping on with the tests, I have added a second hard drive to my system.

root@ubuntu-server:~# fdisk -l /dev/sdb 

Disk /dev/sdb: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 130 cylinders, total 2097152 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table