ChrisAUC
Contributor
Contributor

Re-purposing Datastore Hard Drives

I have been testing ESXi in a lab environment and would like to tare it down to test Hyper-V. Can anyone please suggest a way to fully remove the ESXi partitions so Windows install will recognize the drives? I know of DBAN but according to their site it does not support SAS drives.

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CoolRam
Expert
Expert

Do you want to scrap the esxi and install the hyper-v then you can reinstall the server with the hyer-v

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ChrisAUC
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, I want to scrap ESXi and install Server 2012R2. I can't seem to get the raid array recognized during installation. Not sure its a driver issue or formatting.

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CoolRam
Expert
Expert

If you are installing fresh Hyper-V it will get recognize. Better follow Microsft hardware support for this controller.

From VMware side there is no issue. If your OS will not detect the file system it will always ask for format.

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cykVM
Expert
Expert

Are you trying to install Windows 2012 on the RAID volume? You may have to load the Windows 2012 driver for your storage controller during setup from a USB key.

What type/brand of server and storage controller is that?

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ChrisAUC
Contributor
Contributor

I used GParted, killed the original partitions, created ntfs partitions, and recreated the raid. Windows finally recognized the storage. Thank you all for your suggestions.

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