Scanning block devices provides information about the availability and characteristics of the devices. That information is important for creating a pool configuration file. You can scan block devices by issuing the pool_tool command with the -s option. Issuing the pool_tool command with the -s option scans all visible block devices and reports whether they have an Ext2 or Ext3 file system, LVM version 1 labels, a partition table, a pool label, or an unknown label on them.
|  | Note | 
|---|---|
| The pool_tool -s command does not detect ondisk labels other than those mentioned in the preceding paragraph. | 
| pool_tool -s | 
In this example, the response to the command displays information about one GFS file system, other file systems that have no labels, and a local file system.
| # pool_tool -s
  Device                                            Pool Label
  ======                                            ==========
  /dev/pool/stripe-128K                   <- GFS filesystem ->
  /dev/sda                         <- partition information ->
  /dev/sda1                                        stripe-128K
  /dev/sda2                                        stripe-128K
  /dev/sda3                                        stripe-128K
  /dev/sda4                        <- partition information ->
  /dev/sda5                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sda6                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sda7                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sda8                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sdb                         <- partition information ->
  /dev/sdb1                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sdb2                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sdb3                                      <- unknown ->
      .                                                .
      .                                                .
      .                                                .
  /dev/sdd4                        <- partition information ->
  /dev/sdd5                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sdd6                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sdd7                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/sdd8                                      <- unknown ->
  /dev/hda                         <- partition information ->
  /dev/hda1                            <- EXT2/3 filesystem ->
  /dev/hda2                                  <- swap device ->
  /dev/hda3                            <- EXT2/3 filesystem -> |