Windows volume mysteriously disappears

Question

Hello.

We are running a Windows 2019 with Desktop Experience system. The hardware for the server is a Dell PowerEdge 730 appliance. The system utilizes iSCSI connections to a Nexsan Unity 3300 array with a Nexsan U2G460 expansion bay.

During the past month, one of the volumes on the server disappears. Specifically, the volume, R:. is no longer present in the File Explorer or the Disk Manager snap-in console. The array lists the volume along with all others that are mounted on the server.

A check of the Event Viewer indicated the following warnings:

Event 51, Disk - An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk11\DR11 during a paging operation.

Event 157, Disk - Disk 11 has been surprise removed.

Disk 11 has been identified as that associated with the R: volume.

The above warnings were preceded by the following errors:

Event 63, iScsiPrt - Can not Reset the Target or LUN. Will attempt session recovery.

Event 9, iScsiPrt - Target did not respond in time for a SCSI request. The CDB is given in the dump data.

Event 9, iScsiPrt - Target did not respond in time for a SCSI request. The CDB is given in the dump data.

Event 9, iScsiPrt - Target did not respond in time for a SCSI request. The CDB is given in the dump data.

Event 9, iScsiPrt - Target did not respond in time for a SCSI request. The CDB is given in the dump data.

Event 49, iScsiPrt - Target failed to respond in time to a Task Management request.

Event 39, iScsiPrt - Initiator sent a task management command to reset the target. The target name is given in the dump data.

The first warning that occurs is the following:

Event 129, iScsiPrt - The description for Event ID 129 from source iSCSiPrt cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

The following information was included with the event:

\Device\RaidPort4

I am going to be contacting Nexsan for additional help, but I wanted to know if there is anything on the Windows side that I need to look into as part of the troubleshooting process.

Answer 1

Hello Andy.

It turns out the array is the cause of the problem. The solution involves powering down the servers, and doing the same to the array. That will clear the cache, and hopefully solve the problem.

Answer 2

Hello,

The disk disappearance most often occurs when something disrupts communication between the system and the disk, such as a storage area network (SAN) fabric error or a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) bus problem.

I suggest you refer to the following links for troubleshooting:

Disk <number> has been surprise removed (event ID 157) - Virtual Machines | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards

Zunhui

Answer 3

Hi,

Did you find the cause already?

A couple of days ago I updated my PowerEdge R760 Hyper-V 2022 Cluster (which uses iscsi to connect to our PowerStore) and I'm since then facing the same issues.

I only found time downgrading the Intel NIC drivers to the previous version, but this hasn't solved it yet.

I'm facing downgrading the firmwares, bios and OS updates and trying each of them ...

But, since you are also having this with a R730 (and I checked, there aren't any real significant firmware/driver updates the last couple of months in that line)…

I hope it's not an iscsi issue on ms side...

Answer 4

Hi ahkaplan,

Thank you for the feedback.

I will try to schedule something like that the following days and see if it works.

Kind Regards