One of the following problems exists: Hardware failure Unformatted disk
If you’re trying to install Solaris (SPARC) on a disc which previously had another O/S (*BSD) on it, you will more then likely come across the following error after the system identification stage is complete:
One or more disks are found, but one of the following problems exists:
> Hardware failure > Unformatted disk.The problem is to do with the disc label, at the shell fireup format with the e switch
format -eselect the disc which you are trying to install onto, if you are told that the disc doesnt not contain a disk label, would you like to write a lablel, say yes & specify the type as SMI Label, If youre not asked about the label & presented with a menu, goto the partition section, choose label, specify the type as SMI.
quit & reboot & all should be well 
August 28th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Wow, your entry was the first hit in google after I typed the full text of the error message (which I thought would produce nothing of use). Thank you for posting this!
August 29th, 2006 at 12:22 am
glad to be of use!
January 10th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Handy post, comes up top in a google on the error message. Many thanks, i’ve just spend about an hour on this one trying various different methods of clearing the disk – nice to google it and find the exact instructions required.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
You are great! Now it works!!!!!! Nobody know it, only you! thanks a lots!
July 9th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Thank you very much. Same error message here and your tip solved it wonderful
December 13th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Thank you for the wonderful solution. SUN really don’t care about the details….
December 13th, 2007 at 8:34 am
No problem, I did submit this article to the Big Admin portal but it was never picked.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Thanx man
Tips like this is gold.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
sadly, your tip did not work for me
Ifollowed an advice to previously install solaris on my ultra 10, at least to see, before installing netbsd or something else, so i tried to install solaris 10 u5 first.
The installer stalled at creating the /
I tried again with a far smaller / but the same problem occurred. Even so after hours, the filesystem creation did not come to a finish.
Then i decided to take a look to the netbsd installer before finishing with solaris. The NetBSD installer really created the filesystem within some blinks of an eye, but the freshly installed netbsd 4.0 did not boot afterwards. So i had a completely different problem to solve. I tried this and that but no success. At least i did get the fact that the HD is not physically damaged. It must be a solvable software problem.
I came back to the idea to install solaris and have been confronted to exactly the problem described here.
Now i tried with “format -e” and enter the number (0) of the one and only available disk.
Instead of succeeding, i get a “Segmentation Fault(coredump)” error message.
The same happens if i start format without arguments and choose the disk 0 afterwards. I figured out, i can start format with “format c0t0d0″ wherewith i have one more step done but i get the same error after setting a random value for LBA between minimum and maximum expected value, after defining a disk type. Defining the disktype seems unskippable.
Seems i have to extensively read within more documentation to come across this problem. But thanks anyway.
June 30th, 2008 at 3:49 am
I’d say check your RAM & do a full diag boot before going any further
September 25th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Excellent just what I was looking for.
Thanks heaps!
October 29th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Yeah thanks very much!
Nice and easy.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
It worked perfectly. Thank you very much!