ZFS ZFS and two hard disks

In the Windows personal PC age, we have to partition before writing data into the disk.
I didn't, when I used ZFS.....I then had problems when rebooting reordered the drives wooo weee so I mounted things wrong.
Now UFS and no problems.
I did partition with UFS and used soft updates.
 
Even when using ZFS, you should partition the hard disk, preferably with gpart. And give the partition clear and readable names in the gpart labels. It makes the system easier to administer in the future.
 
Even when using ZFS, you should partition the hard disk, preferably with gpart. And give the partition clear and readable names in the gpart labels. It makes the system easier to administer in the future.
oh?
interesting....now how does one stop the drives reordering on reboot problem?
 
ZFS doesn't care: it looks promiscuously at all block devices, and finds its volumes, even when they get reordered (meaning the /dev/ entries get different names).

For mounts that come from /etc/fstab and similar places: Just use the name /dev/gpt/name.... Those are independent of the order of disk discovery during boot, and only reflect the names or labels given to the partitions in gpart.

One problem I've not solved yet completely: there are still tools that need to be given the /dev/adaX name of the whole device, and can't use labels. The one that comes to mind is smartd. I still need to write a script or program to automatically configure that on every boot, or modify the smartctl package so it can use disk partition labels instead of device names.

But the value of GPT partition names or labels isn't just in making the /etc/fstab file easier to read, or solve the problem of the disks being named differently on a reboot. It simply makes the system easier to administer. Instead of having to deal with /dev/ada1p3 you see a clear name like /dev/gpt/spare_ssd_var_log, which describes the partition much better: it is intended to be mounted on /var/log, and it is the emergency spare boot disk.
 
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