Add or remove disks in the storage pool

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

You can add and remove disks from the storage pool.

You can add more disks to the storage pool as follows:

1. Delete any existing volumes on the disk before you add it to the storage pool. DPM can’t use space in any preexisting volumes located on disks that are added to the pool.

2. DPM regularly rescans the disks and volumes in the storage pool to automatically detect and update the storage pool space. Note that:

   • If you add a disk that contains a volume to the storage pool and later delete that volume, when DPM rescans the disk, it will add the new unallocated space to the available storage pool.

   • If the name of a disk is listed as “Unknown” on the Disks tab in the DPM Administrator Console, you can’t add the disk to the storage pool until the disk name is corrected. To do this, in Device Manager, expand Disk drives. Right-click each disk listed as "Disk drive", and select Uninstall. On the Action menu, click Scan for hardware changes to reinstall the disk.

A storage pool disk is both physically attached to the DPM server and programmatically attached by DPM to the storage pool. To remove a disk from the storage pool do the following:

1. Physically remove the disk. DPM sends an alert that there is a missing volume, and it’s displayed on the Disks tab in the Management task area

2. In the missing volume alert Details pane, click the link to remove the disk from this storage pool. This removes the programmatic attachment.

Note that if you remove the disk from the storage pool and later bring the disk online again, DPM can’t access the existing data on it. If DPM labels a disk as "missing volume" and you do not remove the disk from the storage pool, when you bring the disk online again, DPM will remap the volumes on the disk and can access the existing data on it.