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Date:      Tue, 9 Jan 2001 12:37:53 -0800 (PST)
From:      Joseph Filla <jfilla@yahoo.com>
To:        freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   I have a disk with no label (it's amnesiac). How can I fix this safely?
Message-ID:  <20010109203753.12166.qmail@web2304.mail.yahoo.com>

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I posted this to questions but no replys (yet), so
I'll ask here.

Necessary info: 4.2-STABLE FreeBSD
4x20GB drives on two Promise controllers: ad4, ad6,
ad8, ad10.
 
Now my issue.
I have these 4 20GB drives in a RAID 10 Vinum
configuration. (40GB total usable drive space). Of the
40GB total, I still have about 15GB unused. I want to
create some partitions and ultimately make this free
space usable with vinum.
The problem I have is that I discovered that my
disklabel for ad4 and ad6 isn't the same as disklabel
-r for these drives. In particular I have 'amnesiac'
disks. Here is disklabel for ad4:
su-2.03# disklabel ad4
# /dev/ad4:
type: unknown
disk: amnesiac
label: fictitious
...
...
8 partitions:
#        size  offset    fstype  [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  c: 40088160        0    unused        0    0       
# (Cyl.    0 - 63631)
Now here is the disklabel -r for ad4:
su-2.03# disklabel -r ad4
# /dev/ad4:
type: ESDI
disk: ad4s1
label:
...
...
#        size  offset    fstype  [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:  253952        0    4.2BSD        0    0    0  #
(Cyl.    0 - 403*)
  c: 40088160        0    unused        0    0       
# (Cyl.    0 - 63631)
  e: 23552000  253952    vinum                       
# (Cyl.  403*- 37787*)
 
Ad6 is similar.
I guess I can sum it up by saying my drives have not
been labeled.
This may sound silly, but how serious is having an
amnesiac disk? I've been running this machine for
months. Have I been skating on thin ice and not
knowing it? How can I fix it without doing any damage
to my installation. The manpage talks about writing a
disklable as clobbering my existing drives. Say it
ain't so. While I'm at it, any tips or pointers on the
best way to create a partition in the free space in
the drives. Thanks for the help.

Joe


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