Using the Free Hog Slice

When you use the format utility to change the size of one or more disk slices, you designate a temporary slice that will expand and shrink to accommodate the resizing operations.

This temporary slice donates, or “frees,” space when you expand a slice, and receives, or “hogs,” the discarded space when you shrink a slice. For this reason, the donor slice is sometimes called the free hog.

The free hog slice exists only during installation or when you run the format utility. There is no permanent free hog slice during day-to-day operations.

For information on using the free hog slice, see SPARC: How to Create Disk Slices and Label a Disk or x86: How to Create Disk Slices and Label a Disk.