Minimum drive size in ESXI 6.5?

DeaconFrost

DeaconFrost

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Sep 6, 2007
Messages
11,573
I just brought my home ESXi box online today and ran in to an issue. I was setting up the storage and was able to create a datastore on a spinner WD Red drive that was 1 TB in size. Easy enough. I wasn't able to do the same for a 64 GB SSD on the same SATA controller. I got an error trying to clear the drive's partitions and when trying to create the datastore.

I pulled the drive, cleared in using diskpart so it was empty and unformatted. I put it back in the ESXi box, and ran in to the same issue. As far as I can tell, the drive is fine. Are there issues with the size of the drive, by any chance?
 
I've done 10GB data store before. This was coming off SAN storage though.

I'd try formatting the drive in another box to make sure the drive can actually be formatted.

If it can then try a different port on SATA controller.
 
I've had an old 32GB Kingston SSD refuse to format, much like what you're describing, in esxi 6, or 6.5 (one of the recent versions)

I also have a newer 64GB RealSSD branded drive that works fine. Not much help, I know, but I suspect it has something to do with early generation SSDs.
 
That could be a possibility. It was an old, slow Samsung 64 GB SSD. I actually have a 64 GB RealSSD as well, and was thinking of trying that instead. I'll give that a shot tonight.

Thanks!
 
As a note, all versions of ESXi do not support native 4K disks (4Kn). Check the logical and physical sector size on that disk, and if it is 4096, then it cannot be used in VMWare.
 
Last edited:
I had an issue with my current ESXi setup not wanting to format/add 250gb WD drives on the onboard Intel sata controller,

...they worked fine after I hooked them up through a LSI card in i.t. mode.
Didnt keep it that way as I ended up passing that card and drives to a FreeNas VM.
 
4G for easy rounding, given the metadata overhead. It may also not be replying correctly to the commands, or it may have a non-MSDOS disklabel on it (ESX doesn't try to clear the label).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top