Reinstalled ESXi recover old dataastore

[comeonamit]

Due to a HDD failure, I had to reinstall ESXi but now it doesn't recognize the old datastores.

Is there any way we can recover the old datastores on separate scsi disks on the same server.

[djciaro]

You will need to provide more information.... does not recognize the old datastore?

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[comeonamit]

The disks show up in the Add Storage dialogue box but it says "UNable to read partition information from the disk" while trying to add the datastore...

[djciaro]

Try a rescan from the service console: vmkfstools -s vmhba#

or esxcfg-rescan vmhba#

if the disk is already formatted in VMFS you should be able to see it without adding a new disk, adding a new disk means formating.. I assume you just want to get access to the disk, therefore try rescan tools

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[comeonamit]

Also the old VM's were in ESXi 3.5 update 2 where as the new system installed is exsi 3.5 update 3.

[djciaro]

the update 3 will not change anything regarding your datastores, try the rescans and let me know the results

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[comeonamit]

tried it several times, even tried swapping the disk with another ESXi 3.5 update 2 even that did not recognize it.

It is not working with any of the 10 disks in the system so It can't be the disks and since each disk was a separate datastore, so it can't be anything related to partitions.

[djciaro]

could you provide some info about the disks that you are using and the controller

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[comeonamit]

The system is a Dell PowerEdge 6600, the disks are hot swappable iSCSI disks.