How to force reset a drive in storage spaces

[Bert]

I moved my storage spaces drives from one server to another server and during the transition on out of two pool got unhealthy. I didn't want to deal with recovery so I simply tried to delete the pool and copy the data from backup.

Now, two of my drives become unusable on a Win2016 machine as I cannot access them. It seems like they are stuck in the zombie state. I need a hard reset but I cannot do anything on these drives as they are protected by the OS in a read-only state. Reset-PhysicalDisk does not clear their state. Perhaps any of you know how to reset these drives. If they were SATA drives, I would put them on my Win7 machines and overwrote their boot sector but I only have one machine with SAS controller.

PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-PhysicalDisk -SerialNumber "YGKHK3ZK" | fl *


ClassName : MSFT_PhysicalDisk
Usage : Auto-Select
OperationalStatus : OK
UniqueIdFormat : FCPH Name
HealthStatus : Healthy
BusType : SAS
CannotPoolReason : Insufficient Capacity
SupportedUsages : {Auto-Select, Manual-Select, Hot Spare, Retired...}
MediaType : HDD
SpindleSpeed : Unknown
ObjectId : {1}\\SIMURG-SILO\root/Microsoft/Windows/Storage/Providers_v2\SPACES_PhysicalDisk.Obj
ectId="{f2774de7-2cdf-11e7-965d-806e6f6e6963}D:{2a16f028-b7cf-d4cd-f359-79e1bb358c
8f}"
PassThroughClass :
PassThroughIds :
PassThroughNamespace :
PassThroughServer :
UniqueId : 5000CCA01CC56180
Description :
FriendlyName : HITACHI HUS72302CLAR2000
Manufacturer : HITACHI
Model : HUS72302CLAR2000
OperationalDetails :
PhysicalLocation : Integrated : Adapter 2 : Port 0 : Target 9 : LUN 0
SerialNumber : YGKHK3ZK
AdapterSerialNumber :
AllocatedSize : 2000398934016
CanPool : False
DeviceId : 12
EnclosureNumber :
FirmwareVersion : C1D8
IsIndicationEnabled :
IsPartial : False
LogicalSectorSize : 512
OtherCannotPoolReasonDescription :
PartNumber :
PhysicalSectorSize : 512
Size : 2000398934016
SlotNumber :
SoftwareVersion :
StoragePoolUniqueId :
VirtualDiskFootprint : 0
PSComputerName :
CimClass : root/microsoft/windows/storage:MSFT_PhysicalDisk
CimInstanceProperties : {ObjectId, PassThroughClass, PassThroughIds, PassThroughNamespace...}
CimSystemProperties : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties

 

[gregsachs]

Have you tried instructions here:
Clearing Disks on Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct | Argon Systems

 

[Bert]

I tried something like this earlier and it didn't work.

PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-PhysicalDisk -FriendlyName "HITACHI HUS72302CLAR2000" | Get-Disk
Get-Disk : No MSFT_Disk objects found with property 'Number' equal to '5'. Verify the value of the property and retry.
At line:1 char:63
+ ... Get-PhysicalDisk -FriendlyName "HITACHI HUS72302CLAR2000" | Get-Disk
+ ~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (5:UInt32) [Get-Disk], CimJobException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CmdletizationQuery_NotFound_Number,Get-Disk

 

[gregsachs]

Can you take the drives offline and pass through to a VM and try to reset them that way?

 

[cesmith9999]

have you tried diskpart.exe?

Chris

 

[Bert]

I tried diskpart and it cannot access to the drives although diskpart can see the drives.
I didn't try the VM approach but my guess that it will not work since host would not let anyone to access to these drives.

I finally gave up and restored the old system to hook up the drives. I was able to see the drives and the storage space configuration with missing members on the old system. I called Remove-StorageSpaces and the drives are cleared from any issues.

It seems like a bug in StorageSpaces. First you cannot move drives to another system in a reliable manner and second other system cannot access to the configuration on the drives and clear it. This is kind of concerning as it will be a major issue in enterprise use cases. I was lucky to have backups to restore the content and dealing with a few drives so I can move back and forth between systems.

 

[Bert]

Same problem happened on an other drive which I just removed from a storage pool. It is not in primordial disk since it cannot be added to a pool but I can neither reset nor modify it.

 

[Bert]

Let me circle back on this issue so other can solve this problem in the future. If you happen to get a disk which cannot be added to a new pool since it was part of a pool before, you need to reset the disk via Reset-PhysicalDisk but sometimes this fails, I think this is because a drive may contain also Storage-Pool information. You need to call, Remove-StorageSpaces but the storage-pool information on that disk will not be visible to system in case there are some other storage spaces. You need to take the disk to another machine or remove all the other disks and single out the disk to be able to call Remove-StorageSpaces on it.

 

[jdrch]

Let me circle back on this issue so other can solve this problem in the future. If you happen to get a disk which cannot be added to a new pool since it was part of a pool before, you need to reset the disk via Reset-PhysicalDisk but sometimes this fails, I think this is because a drive may contain also Storage-Pool information. You need to call, Remove-StorageSpaces but the storage-pool information on that disk will not be visible to system in case there are some other storage spaces. You need to take the disk to another machine or remove all the other disks and single out the disk to be able to call Remove-StorageSpaces on it.

I ran into this same problem myself. Here's the (easiest) fix I could come up with. You can fix it on the same PC in the same session.