Storage Spaces : Physical disk cannot be deleted in a pool that contains a parity space

Question

Hi Everybody,

My personal Windows 10 PC has currently the physical disks described result below (Powershell Get-PhysicalDisk):

Number FriendlyName                 SerialNumber         MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus  HealthStatus Usage            Size
------ ------------                 ------------         --------- ------- -----------------  ------------ -----            ----
1      ST3000DM001-1CH166           Z1F4D15E             HDD       False   OK                 Healthy      Auto-Select   2.73 TB
3      ST3000DM001-1CH166           Z1F471XZ             HDD       False   OK                 Healthy      Auto-Select   2.73 TB
2      ST3000DM001-1CH166           Z1F4CYVN             HDD       False   OK                 Healthy      Auto-Select   2.73 TB
0      Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB    S1DHNSAF319647X      SSD       False   OK                 Healthy      Auto-Select 465.76 GB
4      ST4000DM004-2CV104           ZFN4MNDE             HDD       False   OK                 Healthy      Auto-Select   3.64 TB
       ST3000DM001-1CH166           Z1F4722B             HDD       False   Lost Communication Warning      Auto-Select   2.73 TB
5      Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB 0025_385C_0190_8F7F. SSD       False   OK                 Healthy      Auto-Select 931.51 GB

All these units excepted the two SSDs are the physical media of a unique storage pool with a single storage space in "parity" arrangement.

In the Control Panel Storage Management GUI, the Serial Number Z1F4722B physical disk is also in healthstatus "warning" and the storage pool is in healthstatus "unhealthy" with the message "Reduced resilience. Check the Physical drives section."

Since the disk warning occurred, the partition associated with the storage space and the files this storage contains are unreachable.

The execution of the request to delete the physical disk in warning in GUI storage space management no longer does anything: the message remains the same : "Unable to delete the drive as all data could not be reassigned. Add a drive to this pool and repeat this operation." (the physical disk with SN ZFN4MNDE has been added to answer this request at the first time it occurs).

I also executed Powershell commands (I didn’t note them all) to remove the error physical unit. The last executed is a Repair-StoragePool.

Get-StorageJob result:

Name                      IsBackgroundTask ElapsedTime JobState  PercentComplete BytesProcessed BytesTotal
----                      ---------------- ----------- --------  --------------- -------------- ----------
Espace-de-stockage-Repair True             03:19:59    Suspended 0                          0 B    3.75 GB

(Stop-StorageJob doesn't work.)

Get-VirtualDisk result:

FriendlyName       ResiliencySettingName FaultDomainRedundancy OperationalStatus HealthStatus  Size FootprintOnPool StorageEfficiency
------------       --------------------- --------------------- ----------------- ------------  ---- --------------- -----------------
Espace-de-stockage Parity                1                     Degraded          Unhealthy    20 TB         8.05 TB           66.66 %

My problem is to recover my storage space in a healthy state, while not losing any of the approximately 8TB of data from it.

Many thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Hello there,

Please try with the below scripts and see if that helps.

To verify that all drives are healthy and operational :

Get-PhysicalDisk

Get the FriendlyName of the device :

Get-PhysicalDisk | ft FriendlyName

Retire the disk :

Set-PhysicalDisk -FriendlyName "<DeviceName>" -Usage Retired

Find the name of the Virtual Disk :

Get-VirtualDisk

If the name is too long use :

Get-VirtualDisk | ft -AutoSize

For every Virtual Disk in the storage pool do :

Repair-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName "YourVirtualDisk"

Open a new PowerShell window to monitor the repairs with :

Get-StorageJob

Assign the disk to a variable:

$DiskToRemove = Get-PhysicalDisk | Where-Object { $_.Usage -eq ‘Retired’}

Find the name of the storage pool:

Get-StoragePool

Delete the physical disk from the storage pool:

Remove-PhysicalDisk -PhysicalDisks $DiskToRemove -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Storage pool"

If Repair-VirtualDisk takes a long time to execute, let it run its course, before deciding to reformat and rebuild this Storage Spaces array.

Hope this resolves your Query !!

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