At home Lab I came across this error while adding a previously used Windows disk to ESXi. It appears half way while adding the disk via “Add Storage Wizard”. The error can be resolved by formatting the disk in DOS format using Parted utility inbuilt into Esxi. You need to SSH into the Esxi hosts for fixing.
First would need to list the faulty disk for ID so that it can be used while formatting.
# fdisk -l (First to find culprit)
(OR)
# /dev/disks/ (Press TAB) -- To find the Disk_id
Output:
*** *** The fdisk command is deprecated: fdisk does not handle GPT partitions. Please use partedUtil *** Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT Disk /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0: 31481856 sectors, 30.0M Logical sector size: 512 Disk identifier (GUID): adff11cb-235c-470c-b834-f42c4a956911 Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 31481822 Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 64 8191 8128 0700 5 8224 520191 499K 0700 6 520224 1032191 499K 0700 7 1032224 1257471 219K 0700 8 1257504 1843199 571K 0700 Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD10EZEX2D08M2NA0_________________________WD2DWCC3F5328878: 1953525168 sectors, 1863M Logical sector size: 512 Disk identifier (GUID): 00548aec-b27e-4e5c-bec8-ce333913c6b7 Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134 Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 1953523711 1863M 0700 Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT
NOTE: Before the next steps I WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND to BACKUP the data on the disk if its critical.
In my scenario it was the Western Digital Disk which was showing the error i.e. “WDC_WD10EZEX2D08M2NA0” from the above. You might get 2 instances of the disk, format both of them
Run this command to format the above partition.
# partedUtil mklabel /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD10EZEX2D08M2NA0_______________________________WD2DWCC3F5328878____________:1 msdos
# partedUtil mklabel /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD10EZEX2D08M2NA0_______________________________WD2DWCC3F5328878____________ msdos
Now again try to add the disk via “Add Storage Wizard” and it should work.
If you encounter any errors during the process, let us know via Contact Us and will get it resolved promptly.