Fix VMware ESXi Cannot Recognize Local Storage – Causes & Solutions

Basic Information: A Dell PowerEdge R640 server equipped with a PERC H330 RAID controller. It has two 240GB SSDs and one 1TB HDD connected. All three drives are set to Non-RAID mode on the RAID controller (meaning they are not configured in a RAID array). In the ESXi system, the customer created three independent datastores using these three drives, with the ESXi system itself installed on the 1TB HDD.

Problem Description: A customer recently powered down the server to add memory modules. After the memory upgrade was complete, the host booted up normally, and they logged into the ESXi client, but encountered a serious issue: all the virtual machines on this ESXi host had "disappeared." It could not recognize any datastores, and couldn't even see the disk devices.

Why ESXi Cannot Recognize Local Storage

Sometimes during VMware ESXi installation or upgrade, the host may fail to detect local disks (SATA, NVMe, RAID). This prevents admins from creating a local datastore for VMs.

Common causes:

• Unsupported storage controller (RAID/SATA/NVMe not on HCL).

• Driver missing in ESXi installation ISO.

• BIOS/UEFI settings misconfigured (AHCI/RAID mode).

• Disk partitions left from old OS installations.

• Corrupted or hidden datastore signatures.

Troubleshooting Analysis:

(1) Accessed iDRAC to check hardware status; there were no hardware error logs, and all drive statuses were normal.

(2) Checked the RAID controller driver installation status; the driver was already installed.

(3) Used the esxcli command line to check, but it also failed to recognize the RAID controller and disk devices.

 
[root@vmnote:~] esxcli storage core adapter list
HBA Name  Driver    Link State  UID                                   Capabilities         Description
--------  --------  ----------  ------------------------------------  -------------------  -----------
vmhba0    qedf      link-down   fc.2000f4e9d4ea7b34:2001f4e9d4ea7b34  Second Level Lun ID  (0000:19:00.4) QLogic Corp. QLogic FastLinQ QL41xxx Series 10/25 GbE Controller (FCoE)
vmhba2    vmw_ahci  link-n/a    sata.vmhba2                                                (0000:00:11.5) Intel Corporation Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller
vmhba3    vmw_ahci  link-n/a    sata.vmhba3                                                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Lewisburg SATA AHCI Controller
[root@vmnote:~]
[root@vmnote:~] esxcli storage core device list
[root@vmnote:~]

(4) Checked the PCIe hardware recognized by ESXi and found the H330's passthrough status was "Active."

Solution:

Changed the H330's status from "Active" to "Disabled," and after rebooting the ESXi host, the problem was resolved.

Best Practices to Avoid ESXi Storage Issues

• Always use VMware-certified hardware for local disks.

• Keep firmware & drivers updated.

• Backup & wipe old partitions before ESXi install.

• For production, prefer shared storage (SAN/NAS) over local disks.