10.7 Initializing a Disk

If you can see a device listed in the Devices list, but the device is not available for creating pools and volumes, you probably need to initialize the disk.

On the Devices page, the Initialize Disk option initializes the selected device and completely removes all the partitions it contains. All the data stored on the device is lost. If the device contains a partition of an NSS pool, a Traditional volume, or a software RAID device, the Initialize process also deletes data on all of the partitions of the entire pool, volume, or device, even if they reside on separate devices.

For NetWare, when NSS storage pools and volumes are deleted by initializeDevice, their corresponding eDirectory objects are not deleted from the directory. To delete it completely, first delete all the pools and volumes that occupy a device before initializing the device.

WARNING:For NetWare, do not initialize the device that contains your sys: volume. Initializing the sys: volume destroys the operating system and all the data in it.

For Linux, do not initialize the device that contains a system volume (such as /boot, swap, and / (root)). Initializing the system volume destroys the operating system and all the data in it.

This option is disabled (dimmed) if the selected device contains any of the following:

It can also be disabled if there is no space available based on each partition’s size, or if you already have the maximum number of partitions allocated in a software RAID device.

NOTE:You can also use ncsinit utility to initialize and to set the device to a shared state. For more information, refer Section B.27, ncsinit.

To initialize a disk from iManager:

  1. In iManager, click Storage > Devices.

    For instructions, see Section 9.1.3, Accessing Roles and Tasks in iManager.

  2. Select a server to manage to view the Devices list.

    For instructions, see Section 9.1.4, Selecting a Server to Manage.

    A list of devices appears in the Devices list.

  3. In the Devices list, select the device that you want to initialize.

    NOTE:You can select multiple devices for initialization.

  4. Click Initialize Disk.

To initialize a disk from NSSMU:

  1. In NSSMU, click Devices.

    A list of devices appears in the Devices list.

  2. In the Devices list, select a device. Press F5 to select the device.

    NOTE:You can select multiple devices for initialization.

  3. Press F3, Initialize Disk.

If you encounter any error, refer log messages at /var/log/messages. The messages are preceded with NSSMU.