DataStore missing and unmountable

[taylorjonl]

I have a system that has an Areca ARC-1680ix.  The driver isn't available on the install CD so I installed the drive on the motherboards SATA controller, installed VMware ESXi, installed the correct drivers.  Then I restarted, moved the drive to my RAID controller as a pass-through.

VMware ESXi boots fine but the DataStore it normally creates with the spare space on the drive isn't available.  When I try to create a new DataStore and point it to this disk, it sees the VMFS and even gives me the label.  The wizard gives me 2 options that make sense:

Keep the existing signature

Assign a new signature

When I select either of them and click next, it says "The selected disk already has a VMFS datastore.  Select another disk.".

The datastore doesn't have any data on it so if I had to delete it and recreate it I am ok with this.  Or do I need to create a custom install disk with my RAID drivers installed then reinstall?

[ThompsG · Accepted solution]

Hi,

While you could delete and re-create where would be the fun in that? Can you try running esxcfg-volume --list from the management console or rcli. If you get the date store returned then try esxcfg-volume --persistent-mount <VMFS UUID | label> and see if that mounts the data store.

Thanks,

Glen

[taylorjonl]

Awesome, that worked like a charm

[ThompsG]

No worries - happy to help.

Cheers,

Glen

[Drewskib]

Had to logon and say thank you very much!  The gui add storage wizard failed me! But with your help I was able to mount the datastore again!

Thanks again!

Andrew Bray

[skada]

Hi Glen,

Thank you very much. I had the same problem after an upgrade from ESXi 4.0 U4 to 4.1 U2. I lost my data store.

Launched an SSH session, went into /sbin and run esxcfg-volume as you instructed and it worked fine.

I have been seeking an article for several days. Finaly I got it.

Once again thank you.

Saladin