Deleting ZFS slices from a disk

ZFS is great, you can have tons of filesystems in a zpool, you can create raidz/mirror/stripes with just one command, it has compression, quotas and every other cool feature that you can think about.

But what happens if you have to move a ZFS disk to a Solaris 8/9 system?


If you want to use a ZFS’ed disk on an older system you’ve to convert the labels using:

format -e

and then relabel the disk and choose “0″ at the Label prompt:

# format -e c0t8d0
selecting c0t8d0
[disk formatted]

FORMAT MENU:
disk - select a disk
type - select (define) a disk type
partition - select (define) a partition table
current - describe the current disk
format - format and analyze the disk
repair - repair a defective sector
label - write label to the disk
analyze - surface analysis
defect - defect list management
backup - search for backup labels
verify - read and display labels
save - save new disk/partition definitions
inquiry - show vendor, product and revision
scsi - independent SCSI mode selects
cache - enable, disable or query SCSI disk cache
volname - set 8-character volume name
! - execute , then return
quit
format> l
format> l
[0] SMI Label
[1] EFI Label
Specify Label type[1]: 0
Warning: This disk has an EFI label. Changing to SMI label will erase all
current partitions.
Continue? y
Auto configuration via format.dat[no]? y
format>


Now you can just partition your drive with format or use prtvtoc and fmthard.

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