# Need to add an old ZFS drive to new system with a ZFS drive.



## jjthomas (Feb 17, 2013)

I installed FreeBSD with a ZFS drive.  I decided to reinstall FreeBSD onto another disk also with ZFS.  I need to open the old ZFS disk to get data off of it.  I've google'd and read the man pages and everything I've come across is about installing (i.e format) the old disk to make it part of a RAID partition.  Not what I want to do.

How do I add an old ZFS formated partition to my new system as a read only partition?

TIA.

-JJ


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## usdmatt (Feb 17, 2013)

Wen you attach an existing zpool to a new system you need to import the pool to make it available to the system. The following command will show all pools that can be imported and their status (such as if disks are missing etc - remember a pool can span multiple disks in various 'raid' configurations)


```
zpool import
```

You can then import using the same command by adding the pool name.
It's possible that the old pool may have mount points that conflict with your current pool, if so mount with an alternative root. If the old pool had a dataset mounted at /usr, it will now be /mnt/usr


```
zpool import -R /mnt pool
```

If the old pool name conflicts with your current pool you can rename it during import.


```
zpool import -R /mnt pool newname
```


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## jjthomas (Feb 24, 2013)

Thank you.  The last question I had got answered in the man page.  Using Alternate Root Pool does not persist across a reboot. 

Marking Solved.

-JJ


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