skip_alloc is a boolean parameter for the disk init command. It is supported for devices created on non-Windows file systems and on Windows raw systems. When skip_alloc is set to be “true.” it allows user to avoid initialization of pages with zeros. The default of skip_alloc is false.
The disk init syntax is:
disk init name="device name",
physname="physical name",
skip_alloc={true|false},
size=number_of_blocks
This example does not initialize pages with zeroes.
disk init name="d2", physname="/usr/sybase/devices/d3.dat", skip_alloc="true", size="10G"
Adaptive Server does not allocate space during disk initialization if skip_alloc is set to true.
Use skip_alloc to expedite crash recovery on non-NT file systems and on NT raw systems. Also, using skip_alloc with the directio feature creates device faster and improves durability of updates. Regardless of space availability, skip_alloc always prints a warning message to users saying they need to make sure Adaptive Server has the required space for future use.
