> On 8/21/07, Richard <rthorntn at hotmail.com> wrote: > > I see a few options (without any other advice) > > > > --BIOS hack, perhaps turn disk detection off. > > > > --New BIOS update, which is unlikely. > > > > --reset the disk labels "format -e" and create a > slice on each disk, this may mean Solaris wont use > the entire disk and wont write the EFI label? > > Why won't Solaris use the entire disk? And why does > it matter if the > EFI label isn't written? (My understanding is that up > to 1TB, your > drives don't need EFI in Solaris.)
If the BIOS is interfering or failing to do the right thing somehow because it doesn't (properly?) handle EFI labelled disks, creating a Solaris fdisk partition with a slice that consumes all of it (or a non-bootable partition of some type that didn't correspond to anything known, and using the corresponding *pN rather than *sN) would work around that problem. Aside from the one-time inconvenience of a couple of extra steps setting it all up, the disadvantages of that are that zfs might schedule flushing the write cache as if something else might be using the disk too rather than as if it owned it exclusively, and any differences in space usage between fdisk label (possibly plus Solaris label within Solaris partition) and EFI label; but the impact on either performance or space would most likely be negligible unless you were planning on pushing the limits. This message posted from opensolaris.org
