Initializing Disks

Formatting the Disk Media

To perform the first initialization phase, use the interactive format command (on some systems, diskadd) to do a media format of any disk.

	NOTE: SCSI disks are usually preformatted.

For more information, see the formatting(1M) manual page.

Volume Manager Disk Installation

Use either the vxdiskadm menus or the vxdiskadd command for disk initialization. This section describes how to use the vxdiskadd command.

Use the vxdiskadd command to initialize a specific disk. For example, to initialize the second disk on the first controller, use the following command:

# vxdiskadd c0t1d2

The vxdiskadd command examines your disk to determine whether it has been initialized and displays prompts based on what it finds. The vxdiskadd command checks for disks that have been added to the Volume Manager, and for other conditions.

	NOTE: If you are adding an uninitialized disk, warning and error messages are displayed on the console during the vxdiskadd command. Ignore these messages. These messages should not appear after the disk has been fully initialized; the vxdiskadd command displays a success message when the initialization completes.

At the following prompt, enter y (or press Return) to continue:

Add or initialize disks
Menu: VolumeManager/Disk/AddDisks
 
Here is the disk selected.  Output format: [Device_Name]
 
c0t1d0
 
Continue operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

If the disk is uninitialized, or if you choose to reinitialize the disk, you are prompted with this display:

You can choose to add this disk to an existing disk group, a
new disk group, or leave the disk available for use by future
add or replacement operations.  To create a new disk group,
select a disk group name that does not yet exist.  To leave
the disk available for future use, specify a disk group name
of "none".
Which disk group [<group>,none,list,q,?] (default: rootdg)

To add this disk to the default group rootdg, press Return. To leave the disk free as a replacement disk (not yet added to any disk group), enter none. After this, you are prompted to select a name for the disk in the disk group:

Use a default disk name for the disk? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

Normally, you should accept the default disk name (unless you prefer to enter a special disk name).

At the following prompt, enter n to indicate that this disk should not be used as a hot-relocation spare:

Add disk as a spare disk for rootdg? [y,n,q,?] (default: n) n

When the vxdiskadm program prompts whether to exclude this disk from hot-relocation use, enter n (or press Return).

Exclude disk from hot-relocation use? [y,n,q,?} (default: n)

Press Return to continue with the operation after this display:

The selected disks will be added to the disk group rootdg with
default disk names.
c0t1d0
Continue with operation? [y,n,q,?] (default: y) y

If you are certain that there is no data on this disk that needs to be saved, enter n at the following prompt:

c0t1d0
Initializing device c0t1d0.
Adding disk device c0t1d0 to disk group rootdg with disk name
	disk01.
Goodbye.