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Windows Storage Spaces - Preparing for removal stuck at 0,05%

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Monday, November 21, 2016 12:01 AM

Hello

I tried removed 2 disks from storage pool and after moving files to other disks 1 of them was ready to remove and other remained at preparing for removal at 0,05%.

I let it for some more time and it is simply stuck and no way to remove it.

Tried unplugging and plugging disks again, tried to remove it thru windows power shell with storage cmdlets as in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848705.aspx but always "preparing for removal".

Dont know what else more I can do.

Can someone please help me?

Regards

All replies (9)

Tuesday, November 22, 2016 6:37 AM

Hi,

Please just wait for Storage Spaces to transfer the data. Be more patience for a test.

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Tuesday, November 22, 2016 10:54 AM

5 days now stuck at 0,05% Preparing for removal - Not a matter of patience, the process is stuck for some reason :(

Friday, November 25, 2016 7:30 AM

5 days now stuck at 0,05% Preparing for removal - Not a matter of patience, the process is stuck for some reason :(

Have you tried to remove the drive through the UI?

If you created a pool in Windows 10 or upgraded an existing pool, you'll be able to remove a drive from it. The data stored on that drive will be moved to other drives in the pool, and you'll be free to use the drive for something else.

  1. Go to the taskbar, type Storage Spaces in the search box, and select Storage Spaces from the list of search results.
  2. Select Change settings > Physical drives to see all the drives in your pool.
  3. Find the drive you want to remove and select Prepare for removal > Prepare for removal. Leave your PC plugged in until the drive is ready to be removed. This could take several hours, depending on how much data you have stored there.
  4. (Optional) To speed up drive preparation, prevent your PC from going to sleep. Type Power and sleep in the search box on the taskbar, then select Power & sleep settings. Under When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after, select Never.
  5. When the drive is listed as Ready to remove, select Remove > Remove drive. Now, you can disconnect the drive from your PC.

Note

If you run into problems when you try to prepare the drive for removal, it might be because you don't have enough free space in the pool to store all the data from the drive you want to remove. Try adding a new drive to the pool that's as large as the drive you plan to remove and then try again.

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help.
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Tuesday, April 11, 2017 6:32 PM | 2 votes

I found this post by having the same problem. Just reading your answer made me reply for the first time in my life in a forum..just to say you are a complete idiot

Wednesday, January 31, 2018 8:17 PM | 1 vote

I have this same issue, but with a little more information:

I have an array of 24 x 8TB hdds. One of these drives went bad, and had a status of "lost communication" all attempts to reconnect drive failed, so I left the drive physically removed from the server and added a new identical drive in its spot. This has been how we have always had to replace drives either due to failure or for upgrade. We put one new drive in via USB, retire the malfunctioning or in need of upgrade drive, and then the system prepares for removal by slowly moving its in usage to 0%. Once it is done, we remove the drive via storage spaces, then remove the physical drive and then swap the new drive from USB to the SAS port. 

This time though, the prepare for removal stalled at 0.03%. It has been that way for over a week. I have been waiting for the disk optimization to finish so that I can make sure that with all drives balanced and adequate space, that there is no reason this disk should not finish removing. I have tried removing the drive via the GUI and through PowerShell, both attempts fail.

It is important to note that the physical disk is not plugged in to the raid, as it can't be. I have plugged it in to various docks, and readers, and repairers and cloners and nothing can get it to spool up. It clicks and screams and ultimately turns off. But hey, that's what these dual parity/ mirror virtual disks were made for, to stay alive when one of my disks dies.

When I use Get-Storage Job, the attempt to repair the virtual disk and thus finish preparing the drive for removal is listed as follows:

Name                       IsBackgroundTask ElapsedTime JobState  PercentComplete BytesProcessed BytesTotal
                        
Productions-Repair         True             00:00:35    Suspended 0                          0 B    4.75 GB

All attempts to restart that process or make it run again fail.

The stalling removal seems to be a function of trying to offload data from bad sector, but since this drive isn't even installed and it should be repairing and preparing for removal based on parity, it seems odd that it has stalled out.

I would not care if this were just a display issue. I mean, ultimately all 4 virtual disks are running and operational. But it seems to be more than just a display issue. The removal of this disk seems to be tied to it holding one of my virtual disks in an unhealthy degraded status.

Productions     Data  Unspecified Mirror                1                      Degraded          Unhealthy    False

Which means, next time I lose a disk. I lose that virtual drive.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 11:50 PM | 2 votes

Bump... exact same issue, but with 3 drives stuck at .03%, it's now been months of trying forcing removal using DISKPART, and everything else I've found. Does anyone have a solution???? 

Saturday, October 5, 2019 12:51 AM | 1 vote

It appears Microsoft has no intention of fixing this issue, as its been reported for years now. The only solution I can see is to abandon Storage spaces and migrate to a more robust/resilient NAS solution.

Monday, December 16, 2019 2:42 PM | 2 votes

I am now depressed, I have used Storage Spaces for YEARS - this has just happened to me and has disconnected a virtual drive that was over 10TB and now it's inaccessible.

Oh. My. God. Microsoft, what have you done.

Monday, March 23, 2020 3:46 PM | 1 vote

exactly how i feel... HOW IS MICROSOFT JUST IGNORING THIS???!!! THIS IS A HUGE ISSUE!!