Virtual disk still shows up as degraded after repair

Question

On a machine running Windows Server 2012 R2, I have a virtual disk consisting of 8 physical disks in a parity configuration. One drive died, so I replaced the dead drive and followed these instructions for repairing the virtual disk: Replacing a Failed Disk in Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces with PowerShell.

Everything seemed to be working great, with one discrepancy: despite completing the whole repair process with no errors, the virtual disk still is marked as "degraded", even though it once again has 8 healthy drives. What gives?

The file system on the virtual drive (which is backed up) is still accessible, but I'd like to know if I again have resiliency against a drive failure or not, but I can't find any information about why the virtual disk is still degraded, or how to determine if it really is degraded, or how to fix it.

Here is some powershell output that I hope will be useful. Thank you!

And again as text:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-StoragePool

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


PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-VirtualDisk

FriendlyName        ResiliencySettingNa OperationalStatus   HealthStatus        IsManualAttach                     Size
                    me
------------        ------------------- -----------------   ------------        --------------                     ----
Z                   Parity              Degraded            Warning             False                          25.46 TB


PS C:\Users\Administrator> $zdisk = Get-VirtualDisk | Where-Object { $_.FriendlyName -eq 'Z' }
PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-PhysicalDisk -VirtualDisk $zdisk

FriendlyName        CanPool             OperationalStatus   HealthStatus        Usage                              Size
------------        -------             -----------------   ------------        -----                              ----
PhysicalDisk5       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk1       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk2       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk7       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk6       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk8       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk3       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB
PhysicalDisk4       False               OK                  Healthy             Auto-Select                     3.64 TB


PS C:\Users\Administrator>

In case it matters, PhysicalDisk4 is the new replacement disk that I added to replace the dead disk.

Answer 1

One possible explanation for the array still showing up as degraded is that it is truly degraded but the repair job is failing because of a bad sector. In such a case the array status stays as degraded but the disk is still marked as healthy because that job failed to complete.

I suggest to first study the Event Logs for warnings and errors. The following PowerShell command run as Administrator might help to pinpoint the problem by showing only warnings and errors from the related logs:

Get-WinEvent -ProviderName *Disk*,*Ntfs*,*Spaces*,*Chk*,*Defrag* | ?{$_.Level -eq 2 -or $_.Level -eq 3}

Additional information can be found by examining the SMART data of the individual disks. If a suitable utility is not available or is failing on the array, the following PowerShell command run as Administrator can get this information:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Format-List