Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:44:24 Z

I have recently had one of my external USB drives that was attached to WHS and part of the pool die and become totally unresponsive.

I have removed the device physically from the machine. Now I go to the SERVER STORAGE tab in the console to remove the drive from the pool and the following happens.

1. I click remove drive.

2. Remove hard drive wizard starts.

3. I click NEXT.

4. It reports the hard drive is not connected ( I know, I disconnected it !)

5. It says that "if I no longer wish to preserve files that were on it, click next", so I click NEXT.

6. It tells me the consequences of hard drive removal - some files or folders will be permanently lost & no computer backups will be lost. OK, I know that I am happy in the knowledge that I will lose data. The options I have now are - BACK, FINISH or CANCEL. I click FINISH, expecting not to see the drive any more.

7. The wizard reports - Files not moved. Options this time are - RETRY or CANCEL. I click RETRY.

8. GOTO 6. Yes, thats right, I just end up in an endless loop clicking RETRY then FINISH.

So eventually you click close or cancel and the drive is still there in the pool reported as missing but the total server storage is still reporting it there?

Please help me get rid of this drive.

Thanks in advance.

Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:26:15 Z

Apparently WHS does not know how to handle removal of non-existent disks. I think you should file a bug report on WHS connect site.

To remove:

Please note, incorrect editing of the registry may mess up your system.

1. login to WHS console (directly or rdp)

2. start, run, type regedit, hit enter

3. browse to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Disks

4. now find the right disk by looking at the contents of each of the key listed (also check the attributes key)

5. copy or write down the name of the registry key referring to that disk (systemname), something like 18e8d02c-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

4. delete the key referring to the missing disk

6. browse to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Volumes

7. look for volume keys containing the systemname of the disk you want to remove (step 5), and delete all instances containing this key

8. close registry editor and reboot

Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:28:18 Z

Thank you Brubber. This has fixed the problem. I will post a bug report soon.

Twiglet1

Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:41:43 Z

Twiglet,

did your whs-pool rebuild the after disk you removed it - based on the toumbstones?
And did all your applications and services start as expectede when you rebooted?

rh

Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:09:59 Z

Twiglet,

did your whs-pool rebuild the after disk you removed it - based on the toumbstones?
And did all your applications and services start as expectede when you rebooted?

rh

If you are having a problem, you should start your own thread (and give as many details as possible) instead of bringing up a post from almost 18 months ago (WHS has changed significantly since then).

Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:24:13 Z

So, I just ran into this problem (for more details, here's my post on home server land: http://www.homeserverland.com/forums/f/11/t/1446.aspx ) . I performed steps 1-8, but now my problem is that they're not appearing as drives within the WHS console, which means that I can't re-add them back into the storage pool. Why am I trying to re-add them, you ask? Because I am only going from a 1394 (firewire) connection to iSCSI. So, the drives themselves are fully functional. I'm wondering if I only need to change the BusType reg field from Firewire to iSCSI . Is that supported a supported type? Thoughts?

-jk

Jeff King

Cannot remove missing drive from storage pool.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:41:26 Z

So, I just ran into this problem (for more details, here's my post on home server land: http://www.homeserverland.com/forums/f/11/t/1446.aspx ) . I performed steps 1-8, but now my problem is that they're not appearing as drives within the WHS console, which means that I can't re-add them back into the storage pool. Why am I trying to re-add them, you ask? Because I am only going from a 1394 (firewire) connection to iSCSI. So, the drives themselves are fully functional. I'm wondering if I only need to change the BusType reg field from Firewire to iSCSI . Is that supported a supported type? Thoughts?

-jk

Jeff King

iSCSI drives are not supported on WHS.