If the addition happens instantly it means the disks were pre-zeroed.

If the disks are not pre-zeroed but support fast-zero, then the time taken will be much less than if they don't. As far as I am aware, none of the 4GB drives support fast-zero. The difference is significant - either in the region of 30 minutes (fast-zero) or anything up to several hours (depends on the filer they are attached to).

When you initialise a filesystem, a 2-disk FS is created and all other disks are zeroed and configured as spares.

Regards, Andrew

-----Original Message----- From: owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com [mailto:owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com]On Behalf Of mark Sent: 23 January 2000 04:14 To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Adding a spare to a Volume

On Fri 21 Jan, 2000, "Bruce Sterling Woodcock" sirbruce@ix.netcom.com wrote:

...

----- Original Message ----- From: Stephen C. Woods scw@seas.ucla.edu To: toasters toasters@mathworks.com Sent: Friday, January 21, 2000 12:10 PM Subject: Adding a spare to a Volume

...

The seems to be a big difference in how a 5.1.2R3

system with 4GB disks

...

...

and a 5.3.4R2 system with 36BG disks adds a spare disk

to a volume.

...

...

With 5.1.2R3 you get a message to the effect of: Zeroing disk, this will take forever, check progress

with sysconfig -r

...

...

With 5.3.4R2 it happens right away, no delay.

<snip>

<what Bruce said>

4. It's also conceivable that the 36GB disks have a fast-zero

capability that the 4GB disks did not. I seem to recall, when zeroing a filer for a complete rebuild, seeing a message to the effect that if was lucky the disks would do the trick for me, and if I wasn't that it would take forever. They were 4GB disks and took forever.

...

-- End of excerpt from "Bruce Sterling Woodcock"

-- -Mark ... an Englishman in London ...