Destroying ZFS Storage Pools
Pools are destroyed by using the zpool destroy command. This command destroys the pool even if it contains mounted datasets.
# zpool destroy tank
 | Caution - Be very careful when you destroy a pool. Ensure that you are destroying the right pool and you always have copies of your data. If you accidentally destroy the wrong pool, you can attempt to recover the pool. For more information, see Recovering Destroyed ZFS Storage Pools. |
If you destroy a pool with the zpool destroy command, the pool is still available for import as described in Recovering Destroyed ZFS Storage Pools. This means that confidential data might still be available on the disks that were part of the pool. If you want to destroy data on the destroyed pool's disks, you must use a feature like the format utility's analyze->purge option on every disk in the destroyed pool.
Another option for keeping file system data confidential is to create encrypted ZFS file systems. When a pool with an encrypted file system is destroyed, the data would not be accessible without the encryption keys, even if the destroyed pool was recovered. For more information, see Encrypting ZFS File Systems.
Destroying a Pool With Unavailable Devices
The act of destroying a pool requires data to be written to disk to indicate that the pool is no longer valid. This state information prevents the devices from showing up as a potential pool when you perform an import. If one or more devices are unavailable, the pool can still be destroyed. However, the necessary state information won't be written to these unavailable devices.
These devices, when suitably repaired, are reported as potentially active when you create a new pool. They appear as valid devices when you search for pools to import. If a pool has enough UNAVAIL devices such that the pool itself is UNAVAIL (meaning that a top-level virtual device is UNAVAIL), then the command prints a warning and cannot complete without the –f option. This option is necessary because the pool cannot be opened, so whether data is stored there is unknown. For example:
# zpool destroy tank cannot destroy 'tank': pool is faulted use '-f' to force destruction anyway # zpool destroy -f tank
For more information about pool and device health, see Determining the Health Status of ZFS Storage Pools.
For more information about importing pools, see Importing ZFS Storage Pools.