Using the disk init command

System administrators use the disk init command to initialize new database devices with the disk init command.

The disk init command:

Maps the specified physical disk device or operating system file to a database device name
Lists the new device in master..sysdevices
Prepares the device for database storage

Note: Before you run disk init, see the installation documentation for your platform for information about choosing a database device and preparing it for use with SAP ASE. You may want to repartition the disks on your computer to provide maximum performance for your SAP databases.

disk init divides the database devices into allocation units, groups of 256 logical pages. The size of the allocation unit depends on which logical page size your server is configured for (2, 4, 8, or 16K). In each allocation unit, the disk init command initializes the first page as the allocation page, which contains information about the database (if any) that resides on the allocation unit.

Warning! After you run the disk init command, dump the master database. This makes recovery easier and safer in case master is damaged. See System Administration Guide: Volume 2 > Restoring the System Databases.

The disk init command initializes a physical device or file and makes it usable by SAP ASE.

See the Reference Manual: Commands for the disk init syntax.