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Installing Ubuntu on a 10TB drive

cn flag

I have a Supermicro Workstation (SYS-7038A-I) and a Supermicro (Seagate) 10TB 3.5" 7200RPM SATA3 6Gb/s 256M Internal Hard Drive (HDD-3T10T-1KECR). SYS-7038A-I accepts SATA 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

I am having problems installing Ubuntu 20.04.03 on the 10TB drive. It is a desktop install. I am not using RAID. I am using a USB thumb drive for the install, which has worked for smaller drives. The installation completes, Ubuntu tries to restart on the new drive, the Supermicro splash appears, but the screen goes blank. I have tried with and without disk partitioning, disk encryption, and password enabling. I have set the BIOS such that the 10GB drive should be first in line for booting. I can format the 10TB drive for data using ext4 but not for booting up Ubuntu. How can I format it as a boot drive?

Terrance avatar
id flag
Is this a Server or Desktop install? What type of hardware are you installing it on? Please [edit](https://askubuntu.com/posts/1381046/edit) and add in the details. Thanks!
in flag
You mention a "Supermicro splash", so I'll assume this is a server. How is the 10TB configured? Is this using RAID5? FC? Something else?
mondotofu avatar
cn flag
At any time, did the target machine sleep or suspend? My advice is to review the settings in the BIOS to disable any power saving modes during the installation. Secondly, see if you can adjust the power settings to disable the Automatic Suspend while plugged in or on battery power.
mondotofu avatar
cn flag
It's also possible that you may need to change the boot order of devices in the BIOS for your Supermicro platform. https://bobcares.com/blog/supermicro-enter-bios/
waltinator avatar
it flag
Use `gparted` to re-initialize your disk to use GPT (GUID Partition Table, see Wikipedia), rather than MBR (Master Boot Record, see Wikipedia). MBR is limited to 2TB
oldfred avatar
cn flag
It also says UEFI. I would not make one large / (root) partition, use 50 or even 100GB and rest as /home or data partition(s). First partition should be the ESP - efi system partition, then /, so all booting is near beginning of drive. Not sure anymore if drive size can be an issue, but years ago there were bugs even with 2TiB drives, since fixed. UEFI/gpt partitioning in Advance, new versions use swap file so swap partition optional: http://askubuntu.com/questions/743095/how-to-prepare-a-disk-on-an-efi-based-pc-for-ubuntu & https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DiskSpace
Ocean Waves avatar
cn flag
The preceding comments of @waltinator and oldfred helped me. I also contacted Supermicro support. BW at Supermicro provided the solution that I used. I booted a USB ISO image of Ubuntu 20.04.03 in EFI mode. The EFI mode must be set in the BIOS. The installer gives the option to "Do Something Different."
Ocean Waves avatar
cn flag
I made 3 partitions whose sizes were 500MB, 250GB, and 9.75TB using GUID partition tables. The 500MB partition was at the beginning of the drive. It was formatted FAT32. It was a EFI system partition with a mount point at /boot/efi. The second partition was formatted Ext4. It was a Linux filesystem partition with a mount point of /, i.e. Filesystem Root. The third partition was also formatted Ext4. It was a Linux filesystem with a mount point of /home.
Ocean Waves avatar
cn flag
I was unable to encrypt the drive during installation using the USB ISO image, but I think that I will be able to encrypt the root and home partitions using this procedure: https://opencraft.com/blog/tutorial-encrypting-an-existing-root-partition-in-ubuntu-with-dm-crypt-and-luks/.
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