Partition HD before adding it to ZFS pool?

[Nikotine]

Does anyone here do this? Worth the effort, in your opinion?
http://www.freebsddiary.org/zfs-with-gpart.php

zpool replace [-f] pool old_device [new_device]

Replaces old_device with new_device. This is equivalent to attach-
ing new_device, waiting for it to resilver, and then detaching
old_device.

The size of new_device must be greater than or equal to the minimum
size of all the devices in a mirror or raidz configuration.

Partition the HDD and give only the partition to ZFS. [...] This strategy is only useful when setting up a new array. The idea is to use slightly less than your entire HDD. Thus, if a replacement HDD happens to be smaller, you're covered.

[raulfg3]

I do not recomend to partition disk before to adding it to a pool, but I recommend to label it ( using gpart like descrived on your link) to easy manage/administration of disk in the pool.

PD: adax may / can change if you add new disk, labels do not change.

[Nikotine]

Alright, good tip!

[BeNooL]

PD: adax may / can change if you add new disk, labels do not change.

Even if the adax changes, doesn't ZFS use it's own internal identification IDs to recognize a drive ?

[raulfg3]

yes, but the problem is not ZFS is that you identify your device in case you need to replace / delete / etc... or if you use UFS or Raid sollutions.

[BeNooL]

I've used the serial numbers shown on Disks -> Management page to identify with certainty which disk to remove in case of failure.