When an Oracle ASM instance is initialized, Oracle ASM discovers and examines the contents of all of the disks that are in the paths that you designated with values in the ASM_DISKSTRING initialization parameter.

The value for the ASM_DISKSTRING initialization parameter is an operating system–dependent value that Oracle ASM uses to limit the set of paths that the discovery process uses to search for disks. The exact syntax of a discovery string depends on the platform, ASMLib libraries, and whether Oracle Exadata disks are used. The path names that an operating system accepts are always usable as discovery strings.

The default value of ASM_DISKSTRING might not find all disks in all situations. If your site is using a third-party vendor ASMLib, then the vendor might have discovery string conventions that you must use for ASM_DISKSTRING. In addition, if your installation uses multipathing software, then the software might place pseudo-devices in a path that is different from the operating system default.