I have brand new WD 18TB physical (SATA) disks which show CanPool as 'False'. How to fix this?

Question

I have brand new WD 18TB physical (SATA) disks attached to Windows 11 23H2 via USB (3.2 Gen2) enclosures. None of the drives has any data on them, and they have been 'cleaned' using DISKPART, but they still show up in 'Get-PhysicalDisk' as CanPool FALSE. How can I enable them for Pooling? CannotPoolReason is 'Insufficient Capacity', but the capacity of each drive is 16.37TB. I have tried all known steps to resolve this problem, yet it persists. I had the same brand and size of disks running pooled on a Windows 10 22H2 machine (direct SATA and USB) without issues. Also of note, the FriendlyName, SerialNumber and UniqueID properties are all the same for the 3 disks I am trying to pool.

PS C:\Users\******> $pd = (Get-PhysicalDisk | Where MediaType -e HDD) 

PS C:\Users\******> $pd 

Number FriendlyName           SerialNumber MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage           Size 

------ ------------           ------------ --------- ------- ----------------- ------------ -----           ---- 

1      WDC WD18 1KFGX-68AFPN0 621098765432 HDD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 16.37 TB 

2      WDC WD18 1KFGX-68AFPN0 621098765432 HDD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 16.37 TB 

3      WDC WD18 1KFGX-68AFPN0 621098765432 HDD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 16.37 TB

PS C:\Users\Paul Whitmer> Get-PhysicalDisk | Where -Property MediaType -e HDD | Format-Table -Property FriendlyName, SerialNumber, OperationalStatus, CanPool, HealthStatus, Size, MediaType, CannotPoolReason 

FriendlyName           SerialNumber OperationalStatus CanPool HealthStatus           Size MediaType CannotPoolReason 

------------           ------------ ----------------- ------- ------------           ---- --------- ---------------- 

WDC WD18 1KFGX-68AFPN0 621098765432 OK                  False Healthy      18000207937536 HDD       Insufficient Capacity 

WDC WD18 1KFGX-68AFPN0 621098765432 OK                  False Healthy      18000207937536 HDD       Insufficient Capacity 

WDC WD18 1KFGX-68AFPN0 621098765432 OK                  False Healthy      18000207937536 HDD       Insufficient Capacity

How to fix this?

Answer 1

Hi Paul,

Hope you're doing wwell.

The fact that the "FriendlyName", "SerialNumber", and "UniqueID" properties are the same for all three disks is unusual and can cause problems. Each disk should have a unique identifier. If the system cannot distinguish between the disks, it may not be able to pool them correctly.

If the disks have the same "SerialNumber" and "UniqueID", you may need to assign unique IDs manually. Here’s how you can do that:

1. Open PowerShell as an administrator.
2. Run the following command to get the list of physical disks and their current IDs:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, SerialNumber, UniqueID

3. Use the "Set-PhysicalDisk" cmdlet to assign a unique ID to each disk:

Set-PhysicalDisk -UniqueId "new-unique-id" -FriendlyName "disk-friendly-name"

Replace "new-unique-id" with a unique identifier for the disk and "disk-friendly-name" with the appropriate friendly name from your list.

4. Try to create a storage pool using Storage Spaces manually to see if it bypasses the issue.

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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