Virtual Disk Not Showing Up: Do Not Recreate It
A virtual disk can disappear after a reboot, power event, drive replacement, firmware change, controller problem, or interrupted rebuild. The name is missing from the controller; the underlying member data may still exist.
Do not create a replacement virtual disk, initialize the members, or force a foreign configuration online before preserving the displayed state and drive order.
What this condition means
The controller may no longer trust the member set or may be reading conflicting configuration generations. A member can also be late, unstable, or absent even though the others appear healthy.
Restoring a virtual-disk entry is not the same as reconstructing the correct data. A plausible but wrong layout can expose corrupt files and invite damaging repair writes.
What to record
- Server or NAS, controller, enclosure, and firmware
- Expected RAID level, member count, and virtual-disk capacity
- Every controller message and physical-member status
- Slot and serial number of all original and replacement drives
- Power, reboot, replacement, rebuild, import, or firmware sequence
What not to do
- Create a new virtual disk over the source members
- Initialize or format the presented storage
- Import or clear configuration repeatedly
- Force members online by trial and error
- Run filesystem or database repair on an unvalidated result
How ADR evaluates it
ADR examines member identity, metadata, readability, and generation before determining order, offset, stripe geometry, and parity.
Candidate reconstructions are tested away from the controller. The filesystem and priority data are validated before recovery to separate storage.
ADR can work from the labelled member set and reconstruct the expected logical storage independently, without asking the failed controller to write a new virtual-disk definition.
What happens next
A missing virtual disk is often recoverable when the original members are preserved. Prior recreation, initialization, rebuild, and repair writes determine how much the state has changed.