Disk drives are partitioned and labeled by the Solaris installation utility when you install the Solaris release. You can use the format utility to do the following:
Display slice information
Partition a disk
Add a disk drive to an existing system
Format a disk drive
Label a disk
Repair a disk drive
Analyze a disk for errors
The main reason a system administrator uses the format utility is to partition a disk. These steps are covered in Chapter 12, SPARC: Adding a Disk (Tasks) and Chapter 13, x86: Adding a Disk (Tasks).
See the following section for guidelines on using the format utility.