Windows Server - removing a drive
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I have a Windows Server 2012 R2 that has three VHDs as shown here.
After some cleanup, I now find myself with a completely empty, and unformatted drive.
My question to you folks is - what do you think will happen if I delete the 320 GB disk, labeled Disk 1 from the VM?
Will Windows be OK with losing Disk 1? Will Disk 2 suddenly be renamed Disk 1? or will that happen at a reboot? And if it waits for a reboot, will the drive letter stay the same? Will all of my network shares remain intact that point to the current disk 2 (F:)?
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Right Click, select offline. Then remove it on the VM host.
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@Harry-Lui said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
Right Click, select offline. Then remove it on the VM host.
Yep that's the right way to do it.
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Windows should not panic if you remove it. What does removing a hard drive from a physical box do? Nothing tragic.
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
Windows should not panic if you remove it. What does removing a hard drive from a physical box do? Nothing tragic.
I can't say I recall removing a middle drive from a Windows box before, hence the question.
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@Dashrender said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
Windows should not panic if you remove it. What does removing a hard drive from a physical box do? Nothing tragic.
I can't say I recall removing a middle drive from a Windows box before, hence the question.
Middle drive?
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@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
@Dashrender said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
Windows should not panic if you remove it. What does removing a hard drive from a physical box do? Nothing tragic.
I can't say I recall removing a middle drive from a Windows box before, hence the question.
Middle drive?
Yeah, the drive listed as second in disk manager.
It shouldn't have any adverse effect, you're not resizing a partition of the drive to overlap another section of the same drive. This would be the same as just pulling the SATA cable from the drive and letting the system boot without it attached.
There will be no issues.
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equating my situation to a phsyical server would be like having a system that has no RAID, 3 drives and you're removing the middle drive.
upon reboot, the BIOS will (I assume) reorder the drives to make the last drive now listed as drive #2 instead of #3.
I'm near positive that Windows will barely notice that anything has changed, I feel like Windows will reboot without a hitch and live will progress as normal - but I don't know this to be true.
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@Dashrender said in Windows Server - removing a drive:
equating my situation to a phsyical server would be like having a system that has no RAID, 3 drives and you're removing the middle drive.
Well that much I can tell you, it will act the same as pulling out an end drive
