Replaced disk, does the data get destroyed

Ah! There’s the underlying goal, finally!

Having a play-test machine is a good idea, though I’m not convinced this is the best method of duplicating your setup to be put into “production mode”.

Honestly if you would have started with “Hey, I’m testing this on a machine, and I want to create a copy of the environment onto its final resting place on the “real” server” I would have recommended replication; that way you would have to deal with “data loss” from the weird convoluted cloning attempt you’ve been trying to do.

The steps for this would be so much simpler, supported and hopefully obvious:

  1. Create a new pool on the “new” disk
  2. Set up a local one-time replication to copy the old pool into the new pool
  3. export the new pool and remove the disk
  4. import the new pool into the new production system

If you want to keep the old name on the new system, @Stux has also created a quick guide on that too over here. You only need to do the second half, starting with “Once that is finished”.