Strange, Steve wrote:
Is there any reason NOT to zero disks that you are leaving in the system as spares? They will have to be zeroed when you add them to a volume (or create a new one) anyway, thus delaying their availability in that volume for data. If they are chosen for reconstruct, they do not need to be zeroed ahead of time. But either way, the performance effect on the system of zeroing disks is negligible, so why not zero them all?
Whenever I destroy a volume, but don't immediatly put the spindles into another volume, I zero the spares. the biggest reason: so that if those spindles are later made into a volume, or added to an existing volume, that operation is "instant", instead of having to wait for them to zero.
In general, I keep all spares zeroed; it's a low-impact operation and its a handy convenience. actually, I'd like to see an option that auto-zeros spares when they are inserted, so I never need to do it manually.
-skottie