Skip to main content
Sign Out

Welcome to Dell

My Account
  • Place orders quickly and easily
  • View orders and track your shipping status
  • Enjoy members-only rewards and discounts
  • Create and access a list of your products
  • Manage your Dell EMC sites, products, and product-level contacts using Company Administration.
Sign In Create an Account Dell Financial Services Premier Sign In Partner Program Sign In
Contact Us

Your Dell.com Carts

Dell PowerVault ME5 Series Administrator's Guide

PDF

Clearing disk metadata

You can clear metadata from a leftover disk to make it available for use. This action is accessible via Maintenance > Hardware > Disk > Actions when a leftover (LEFTOVR) disk is selected. Choosing this action clears metadata only from leftover disks. If you specify disks that are not leftovers, the disks are not changed.

CAUTION: Consider the following points before clearing disk metadata:
  • Only use this action when all disk groups are online and leftover disks exist. Improper use of this action may result in data loss.
  • Do not use this action when a disk group is offline and one or more leftover disks exist.
  • Do not use this action on disks that have gone leftover due to disk errors.
  • If you are uncertain whether to use this action, contact technical support for assistance.

Each disk in a disk group has metadata that identifies the owning disk group, the other disks in the disk group, and the last time data was written to the virtual pool. The following situations cause a disk to become LEFTOVR.

  • The disks timestamps do not match so the system designates members having an older timestamp as leftovers.
  • A disk is not detected during a rescan, then is subsequently detected.
  • A disk in a disk group is logically or physically removed from the system, and is later returned after the system has noted its removal.

When a disk becomes a leftover, the following changes occur:

  • The disk health becomes Degraded and its usage value becomes LEFTOVR.
  • The disk is automatically excluded from the disk group, causing the health of the disk group to become Degraded or Fault, depending on the RAID level.
  • The fault LED on the disk is illuminated amber.

If a compatible spare is available, and the health of the disk group is Degraded or Critical, the disk group will use it to start reconstruction. When reconstruction is complete, you can clear the leftover metadata on the disk. Clearing the metadata deletes all data on the disk and change the disk health status to OK and its usage value to AVAIL. The disk may become available for use in a new disk group.

NOTE:
  • If a spare is not available to begin reconstruction, or reconstruction has not completed, keep the leftover disk so that you will have an opportunity to recover its data
  • ADAPT disk groups do not use spares for reconstruction.
NOTE:Disk health considerations:
  • Before clearing metadata from a LEFTOVR disk to reuse it, check whether the disk previously reported excessive media errors. If so, the disk is probably not safe to use, and should be replaced.
  • If the metadata on the disk has been cleared, verify that the disk health status is OK.
  • When rebuilding a disk group, do not use an unhealthy disk from which metadata has been cleared

Rate this content

Accurate
Useful
Easy to understand
Was this article helpful?
0/3000 characters
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please select whether the article was helpful or not.
  Comments cannot contain these special characters: <>()\