Is there a maximum size limit for hard disks on Linux?

[tgontz]

First and most importantly, is there a maximum size limit for hard disks on Linux?

More specifically, I wish to build a Fedora file server and would like to know if I am going to run into problems with very large disks like a 500GB, 750GB, or even a 1TB drive.

Also, can anyone recommend a good RAID controller card that will support at least 4 hard drives?

And lastly, even if Linux will not have a problem with any of of these sizes do RAID controller cards support these disks?

Thanks!

[ajamison]

As far as i know you can have a drive higher then several TB's but i am not sure about the raid part

[Firewing1]

I believe there is a limit, but it's nowhere near the size you are describing. I wouldn't worry too much :)
Firewing1

[brumster]

First and most importantly, is there a maximum size limit for hard disks on Linux?


The only main restriction is imposed by the hardware you connect it to; from a fc6 perspective, the limitations would come from the filesystem you put on it. ext2, for example, has a partition limit size of 4TB I believe. XFS is most likely larger.


Also, can anyone recommend a good RAID controller card that will support at least 4 hard drives?


Depends on how much you're willing to spend. A 3ware controller would be the ultimate way to go in terms of performance, reliability and support but will cost several hundred £ (ukp). I've had good results with Fedora's software RAID - provided you have a motherboard with the appropriate number of SATA ports (or an add-in card with enough SATA ports on it - at least four, by the sounds of things?) then you can use linux software raid to get yourself a cheap RAID array. It won't be as performant as a hardware solution but if it's just for a fileserver for a few users I doubt you'll have issues with it.

Cheers,
Dan

[Firewing1]

Although if you'd like to use the ext# filesystems ext4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4) has much larger limits.
Firewing1

[tgontz]

Thank you very much for the replies!

As I have a few more questions, let me give more specifics about my project. The file server I am building is to be a central storage location for RAW files (digital photos) that will be accessed from two workstations. The files are approximately 5 - 12 MB each. At times as much as 4 GB worth of files will be downloaded to the file server at once from the workstations.

1. Given the information above, do you have any suggestions as to what my minimum proccesser & RAM requirements should be?

2. If I have a motherboard with that uses ATA drives, is there any problem with installing Fedora on an ATA drive connected directly to the motherboard and then use SATA drives connected to a RAID card for file storage?

Thanks!

[Firewing1]

1. Well, it all depends on your budget... *minimum* I'd say 2GHz and 512MB RAM, but that would probably end up being slow. If you'd like some real speedy transfers go for and dual core and 2GB ram. (e6300/e6400 + DDR2 800MHz RAM would be really fast). Don't forget the harddrives either, they will probably make the most difference! No question go for SATA II 7200RPM drives or normal SATA 10kRPM drives.
2. A while ago it would be problematic but now SATA installs on most computers will go just fine.
Firewing1

[micagreenmachin]

IMHO, you'll run out of network bandwidth before you have problems with processor speed (within reason of course)... There's not too much processing going on in a file server, much more to do with network bandwidth and storage speed, that's where I would spend my $$.

Make sure you have a good 1Gbps NIC in there (or two and use a bond network interface with round robin) and a fast switch between the fileserver and the workstations - that's always my bottleneck at work, the switch/hub between the servers and the network speed in general.

Fast disks and a controller that can handle the throughput that you're talking about would be a good idea of course, but not as critical as they would be if you were running say, a database server... A striped array, 1+0 for some fault tolerance would make the storage a little faster, though I'll bet that RAID 5 would be fine in your situation and save a (little) bit of cash on the disks/get you more storage per $$.

Choose your filesystem carefully, it can make a huge difference in performance... I've been using XFS on a 400GB 2 disk SATA RAID 0 array at home to store HDTV and movies and the performace is pretty darm good. I don't have any specific metrics to share, but I can copy and delete large (up to 8GB+) files pretty fast (and that's on an Athlon XP 2700 w/512 MB RAM). There's also reiserfs, but I haven't tried that one yet.

-Todd

[brumster]

I would echo Todd's comments entirely. Processor and memory are not what you should be concerned about; an old Athlon XP with half a gig of ram will serve up files perfectly fine. Software RAID on my old Athlon XP machine rarely consumed more than 10% of CPU usage so a dual-core setup will just be overkill. Prioritise on your network infrastructure, your disk controllers and your disks themselves.

Western Digital's range of RE (RAID Edition) drives get my vote in terms of longevity.

[Firewing1]

That's true, it also depends on the speed of your local network... A 100Mbit LAN gives nice transfer speeds, but as always the faster the better.
Firewing1