Unable to Bring Storage space online. Shows "Error - Reduced resiliency"

Question

Hi,

I'm facing an issue where my storage space in showing "Error- Reduced Resiliency; check the Physical drives section".

Initially I've had 2x2TB and 1x4TB drives in the pool. Which has a parity space in it.
Few weeks ago, one of the 2TB drive suddenly went offline. There was no removal option in Storage Space UI for the drive. So, I removed the physical drive from the PC to check on another PC (doesn't get detected in other pc as well). As I did not have any spare drive at that time, the pool ran in "Warning - Reduced resiliency" mode for about 3 weeks.

Last week, when I got hold of another 2TB drive, I added it to the pool. After the pool completed optimized, I tried to remove the faulty drive from the pool using UI.

This is when every went wrong. Drive removal got stuck at "0.06% used" and still shows "Preparing for removal".
And the pool changed to "Error - Reduced Resiliency; check the Physical drives section" and went offline.
So, all my data in that storage space became inaccessible.

Things that I've tried so far...

1. Tried to remove the faulty drive again. Shows "Can't remove the drive from pool" error popup.
2. Added another 1TB drive to the pool as stated by error popup.
3. Tried to optimize the drives again. Optimization completes but faulty drive remains at 0.06% used.
4. "Bring online" option does nothing. The drive remains offline.
5. I'm able to create new parity space in the pool. So existing drives looks okay.

I understand that, some of the data might have got corrupted.
Is there any way to bring the Storage space online (Losing some data is acceptable).
But can’t afford to lose all data. Most of the newer data doesn’t have a backup yet.

Please Help
Thanks and regards
A Sarker

Note: I'm running Windows 10 20H2 (Build 19042.1052)

Answer 1

Hi,

There was no removal option in Storage Space UI for the drive. So, I removed the physical drive from the PC to check on another PC (doesn't get detected in other pc as well).

Do mean you removed the physical disk directly from the slot without doing some operation from System level?

Would you please also provide the screenshot of get-physicaldisk?

Besides, as the promotion, could you try to add a new physical disk into the storage pool?

Thanks for your time!
Best Regards,
Anne

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Answer 2

@Xiaowei He

Do mean you removed the physical disk directly from the slot without doing some operation from System level?
--> The PC was turned off. And PC couldn't detect the drive anymore anyway.

Would you please also provide the screenshot of get-physicaldisk?
--> Here you go

These WD red 2TB are from a bad batch it seems. 2x2TB and 3x4TB WD Reds failed within a year with all less than 5000 hrs runtime.

Besides, as the promotion, could you try to add a new physical disk into the storage pool?
--> Already added 1x2TB and 1x1TB drive to the pool. Still faulty drive fails to get removed from pool.

S.M.A.R.T. shows, there are some bad sectors in my last 4TB WD red drive in the pool. My guess is that, because of this, some data cannot be moved. As there are not enough data to recover those corrupt files.

Is there any way to force remove the faulty drive from pool anyway and bring the virtual disk online?
That way I can backup the data and replace the 4TB drive as well.

Answer 3

Hi!
I have the exact same problem. Was there a solution for this?

Thanks!