[Storage Space] Removal of physical disks

Removal of physical disks (including set usage, repair, remove).

Removal of a Physical Disk from an existing pool consists of the following workflow;

  • Setting the Usage property on the Physical Disk to ‘retired’ to prevent additional data from being placed on the Physical Disk.
  • Executing the Repair-VirtualDisk command on all Storage Spaces associated with the Physical Disk to remove from the storage pool.
  • Executing the Remove-PhysicalDisk command on the physical disk to remove it from the pool.

Warning: Storage Spaces configured using the “Simple” resilencysetting will be lost if any associated Physical Disk is removed.

Example of removing a PhysicalDisk

Set-PhysicalDisk –FriendlyName PhysicalDisk8 –Usage Retired

Get-PhysicalDisk –FriendlyName PhysicalDisk8 | Get-VirtualDisk | Repair-VirtualDisk

Then we would wait for the StorageSpace’s HealthStatus to change from InService, to Healthy (indicating that repairs are complete)

Remove-PhysicalDisk –FriendlyName PhysicalDisk8

Note: When executing the Repair-VirtualDisk command, if the healthstatus of the VirtualDisk does not change to InService, check to ensure that adequate Pool space exists for removal of the PhysicalDisk.  If adequate space does not exist, it may be necessary to add a new PhysicalDisk prior to removal of the old one.

You can utilize the Get-StorageJob Cmdlet to view the progress of running repair operations. After all repair operations have successfully completed, the physical disk which was set to Retired usage, can be safely removed.

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