Maximum filesystem sizes
One of the topics discussed for each filesystem is how large of a volume can you put on it. For most of them, that number is 16 TB, a shared artifact of using 32 bit numbers to represent filesystem information. Right now, it's quite easy to exceed 16 TB in a volume created with a moderately sized array of terabyte or larger hard drives. This makes this number an increasingly problematic limit.
There are three levels of issues you can run into here:
- The data structures of the filesystem itself don't support large volumes.
- Tools used to create and manipulate the filesystem do not handle large sizes.
- The disk partitioning scheme needed to boot the operating system doesn't handle large volumes.
The last of those is worth spending a moment on, since that problem is mostly independent of the filesystem specific details of the first two.
Most PC hardware on the market, with the notable exception of Apple Intel Mac OS X systems, partition drives using...
