Detach a Hard Drive from a datastore

[darrenj78]

Is it possible to detach a HDD from a datastore? It's easy to attach and add more storage, but I don't see how to do the opposite.

[DSTAVERT]

You will need to be a little more explicit. A single drive as single datastore? A drive added to an array? A datastore expanded using extents?

What will you be doing after you detach the drive?

[darrenj78]

Yes, it's local ata drive in an array. It's part of the datastore. I found I didn't have enough disk space when I first built the server, so kept adding drives...to the datastore.

I've deleted all but one VM from the system to reduce space requirements as I would liked to detach or remove a 500 Gig.

Hopefully that makes more sense.

[DSTAVERT]

No shorcuts. You would need to remove the VM. Rebuild the array without the drive. Create your new datastore and then move the VM back to the datastore.

[AlbertWT]

Hi All,

In this case of local datatore operations and configuration changes, it would be easier for you to install the ESXi on the USB since there is no footprint at all in the hard drive LUN, cmiiw therefore you can just detach the USB and performs whatever operation you need and rescan the datastore in the ESXi.

Kind Regards,

AWT