Disks can be labeled with a legacy Solaris VTOC (SMI) label when you create a storage pool with a disk slice, but using disk slices for a pool is not recommended because management of disk slices is more difficult.
On a SPARC based system, a 72-GB disk has 68 GB of usable space located in slice 0 as shown in the following format output:
# format . . . Specify disk (enter its number): 4 selecting c1t1d0 partition> p Current partition table (original): Total disk cylinders available: 14087 + 2 (reserved cylinders) Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks 0 root wm 0 - 14086 68.35GB (14087/0/0) 143349312 1 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 2 backup wm 0 - 14086 68.35GB (14087/0/0) 143349312 3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
On an x86 based system, a 72-GB disk has 68 GB of usable disk space located in slice 0, as shown in the following format output. A small amount of boot information is contained in slice 8. Slice 8 requires no administration and cannot be changed.
# format . . . selecting c1t0d0 partition> p Current partition table (original): Total disk cylinders available: 49779 + 2 (reserved cylinders) Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks 0 root wm 1 - 49778 68.36GB (49778/0/0) 143360640 1 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 2 backup wm 0 - 49778 68.36GB (49779/0/0) 143363520 3 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 4 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 5 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 6 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 7 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 8 boot wu 0 - 0 1.41MB (1/0/0) 2880 9 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
An fdisk partition also exists on an x86 based system. An fdisk partition is represented by a /dev/dsk/cN[tN]dNpN device name and acts as a container for the disk's available slices. Do not use a cN[tN]dNpN device for a ZFS storage pool component because this configuration is neither tested nor supported.