“format” is the Solaris tool used to initialize disks. Format can sometimes have a problem with disks that bear an EFI disk label. In which case, replacing the EFI label with a more traditional VTOC disk label can help.

The problem appears when an attempt is made to label the disk using format. The label operation fails with “Current disk is unformatted”. Many other format options fail with the same message. Newfs will not recognise the disk and it is therefore impossible to create a file system. Continue reading →