Pogoplug v2 can't boot from 3tb usb drive

[alui11]

I've successfully fully installed alarm on one if my usb 128gb drives. However, when I tried to install alarm on my Seagate backup plus 3TB drive, my pogoplug won't boot into alarm. It just boots to the pogoplug os. I found out that Uboot doesn't support booting on drives > 2TB, but others have had success with >2TB drives by using hybrid mbr partitions. I tried creating hybrid mbr using gdisk, but it still wouldn't boot. Has anyone had any success booting off of a 3TB drive on a pogoplug e02? I'm a noob at this, so any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Geoff]

When you use gdisk, it automatically creates a "protective MBR partition table" in addition to a "GPT partition table." The resulting setup is *not* a hybrid. In order to make a hybrid, you would need to: (first) use gdisk to create the partitions you want, with the first one being large enough (typically 8-16GB or so) for the Arch rootfs, then maybe a swap partition (1GB or so) if you like, followed by any huge partitions you want to fill the drive; and then (second) go back and use fdisk after you're finished with gdisk. Using fdisk, you would delete the (protective) MBR partitions and then create instead new partition(s) identical in extent and type to only the small initial partition(s) that gdisk created. Don't bother about the huge partitions; they probably won't fit in the MBR partition table anyway. Once you're done with this, don't use gdisk again, as it would fubar your hybrid setup. Uboot should use the MBR, and then the kernel should use the GPT.

Please, someone correct me if I have missed any steps.

Edit: I didn't realize gdisk could do all of the above (see below) without any need for fdisk to fix up the MBR. Thanks.

[moonman]

Gdisk works fine. You just have to answer No to " Place EFI GPT partition first" question in gdisk when creating HMBR.

[alui11]

When I used gdisk to create the hybrid partition, I did answer N to the " Place EFI GPT partition first" question. I created 2 partitions, with the first being 20G and the second the rest of the drive. I labeled the first "rootfs" and set it bootable. What I wasn't sure is the steps after that? What I did was I connected the drive back to the pogoplug and proceeded to format the drive using mkefs, basically following the installation guide except I replace the fdisk part by gdisk. Should I have done that? Or do I need to format it and extract/install the alarm tar files some other way?

[Schuyler]

Bumping this thread because I too am having issues with a 3TB e-hdd.