Migrating a Storage Pool from Windows Server 8 Beta to Windows Server 2012 RTM

  • Article

I had a computer running Windows Server 8 Beta with a Storage Pool using the “Parity” resiliency type. I installed Windows Server 2012 RTM “over it” (i.e. not an upgrade) and completely lost access to this Storage Pool when the RTM install completed. So, using a number of MSDN resources and PowerShell commands, I got the Storage Pool back using the following steps:

  1. Reinstalled Windows Server 8 Beta (Build 8250).

  2. Opened PowerShell as Administrator (i.e. elevated).

  3. Executed the following command:

    1. Get-StoragePool

  4. This showed that I had two Storage Pools available.

    FriendlyName OperationalStatus HealthStatus IsPrimordial IsReadOnly
    ------------ ----------------- ------------ ------------ ----------
    RAID OK Healthy False True
    Primordial OK Healthy True False

  5. The one named “RAID” is the one that I wanted to mount.

  6. I found instructions suggesting that I make it read/write, so I executed the following command:

    1. Set-StoragePool -FriendlyName RAID -IsReadOnly $false

  7. Executing Get-StoragePool again displayed the following:

    FriendlyName OperationalStatus HealthStatus IsPrimordial IsReadOnly
    ------------ ----------------- ------------ ------------ ----------
    RAID OK Healthy False False
    Primordial OK Healthy True False

  8. Storage Pools are mounted as Virtual Disks and need to be referenced by a Virtual Disk Friendly Name, not a Storage Pool Friendly Name. To determine which Virtual Disks were available for mounting and their Friendly Names, I issued the following command:

    1. Get-VirtualDisk

  9. This showed the Virtual Disk’s name to be “RAID5”:

    FriendlyName ResiliencySettingName OperationalStatus HealthStatus IsManualAttach Size
    ------------ ------------------- ----------------- ------------ -------------- ----
    RAID5 Parity Detached Unknown True 1.2 TB

  10. Then I issued the following command to mount the Virtual Disk:

    1. Connect-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName RAID5

  11. At this point, the disk appeared in “Disk Management” (diskmgmt.msc), but it was offline.

  12. I right-clicked on the area labeled “Disk 6, Basic, … , Offline” and selected “Online”. Then the drive was mounted to the first available drive letter:

    1. image

  13. Then I went into the D: drive, copied all of the files to another partition, and reinstalled Windows Server 2012 RTM where I could create a new, RTM-compatible Storage Space and copy the data back to it.

Rob