Remove Failed Drive in Windows Storage Pools

software-raidwindows-server-2012-r2windows-storage-server

I am currently using Windows Server 2012 R2 with Windows Storage Pools

I have a virtual disk called "2T RAID" that is in Parity mode.

There are 8 – 2T hard drives in this virtual disk. Today one of them failed. I do not have a spare disk to replace it with.

I'm trying to get the virtual disk to come back online without replacing the disk. I have physically removed the failed hard drive and set it to "Retired" using PowerShell. This is the current state of the storage pool:
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If I try to attach the virtual disk, it just fails with no real info as to why. If I try to remove "PhysicalDisk-1" I get this error:enter image description here

Is there anyway I can get this virtual disk to come back online without having to replace the failed hard drive?

Best Answer

It is not possible to have the virtual disk come back online until a replacement hard disk has been allocated once the failed disk has been retired.

To quote technet:

You can't remove a disk unless sufficient unallocated capacity and a sufficient number of disks are available to successfully repair the storage spaces that depend on the disk.

It may be possible to re-insert the failed disk and let the Storage Space rebuild on that for the time being, however it is a much better solution to wait for the replacement disk if downtime for the volume is acceptable.

To avoid this issue in the future only retire a disk once a replacement has been added to the physical system, Storage Spaces will not make use of a disk once it has been marked as failed. Full instructions and the procedure here.

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