Tag Archives: fdisk

Create a small partition on the drives for tests

Ok, as you know I work with ZFS, DRAID, Erasure Coding… and Cold Storage.
I work with big disks, SAS, SSD, and NVMe.
Sometimes I need to conduct some tests that involve filling completely to 100% the pool.
That’s very slow having to fill 14TB drives, with Servers with 60, 90 and 104 drives, for obvious reasons. So here is a handy script for partitioning those drives with a small partition, then you use the small partition for creating a pool that will fill faster.

1. Get the list of drives in the system
For example this script can help

DRIVES=`ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep "sd" | grep -v "part" | grep "wwn" | tr "./" "  " | awk '{ print $11; }'`

If your drives had a previous partition this script will detect them, and will use only the drives with wwn identifier.
Warning: some M.2 booting drives have wwn where others don’t. Use with caution.

2. Identify the boot device and remove from the list
3. Do the loop with for DRIVE in $DRIVES or manually:

for DRIVE in sdar sdcd sdi sdj sdbp sdbd sdy sdab sdbo sdk sdz sdbb sdl sdcq sdbl sdbe sdan sdv sdp sdbf sdao sdm sdg sdbw sdaf sdac sdag sdco sds sdah sdbh sdby sdbn sdcl sdcf sdbz sdbi sdcr sdbj sdd sdcn sdr sdbk sdaq sde sdak sdbx sdbm sday sdbv sdbg sdcg sdce sdca sdax sdam sdaz sdci sdt sdcp sdav sdc sdae sdf sdw sdu sdal sdo sdx sdh sdcj sdch sdaw sdba sdap sdck sdn sdas sdai sdaa sdcs sdcm sdcb sdaj sdcc sdad sdbc sdb sdq
do
(echo g; echo n; echo; echo; echo 41984000; echo w;) | fdisk /dev/$DRIVE
done