Before you use a disk, you need to know if it has been initialized and placed under VxVM control. You also need to know if the disk is part of a disk group, because you cannot create volumes on a disk that is not part of a disk group. The vxdisk list command displays device names for all recognized disks, the disk names, the disk group names associated with each disk, and the status of each disk.
To display information on all disks that are known to VxVM
# vxdisk list
VxVM returns a display similar to the following:
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS c0t0d0 auto:hpdisk mydg04 mydg online c1t0d0 auto:hpdisk mydg03 mydg online c1t1d0 auto:hpdisk - - online invalid enc0_2 auto:hpdisk mydg02 mydg online enc0_3 auto:hpdisk mydg05 mydg online enc0_0 auto:hpdisk - - online enc0_1 auto:hpdisk - - online thinrclm
The phrase online invalid in the STATUS line indicates that a disk has not yet been added to VxVM control. These disks may or may not have been initialized by VxVM previously. Disks that are listed as online are already under VxVM control.
VxVM cannot access stale device entries in the /dev/disk and /dev/rdisk directories. I/O cannot be performed to such devices, which are shown as being in the error state.