Probably everyone who has ever touched LSI controllers and the megacli tool has had this error or he is going to have it for sure! It’s only a matter of time when you receive it when creating or replacing a disk! No this is not another article for this error!!!
FW error description: The current operation is not allowed because the controller has data in cache for offline or missing virtual drives.
Probably you want to replace a failed disk and you have inserted the new one and you cannot add it into the RAID array or something similar. In our case, the drive failed and even stopped working, the slot showed “missing drive” status. We replace the hard drive and it was in “Unconfigured(Good), Spun Up”
You have to use exactly the name of the Virtual Drive with the zero leading if any and even you may use double quotes
root@srv ~ # megacli -DiscardPreservedCache -L"08" -a0
Adapter #0
Virtual Drive(Target ID 08): Preserved Cache Data Cleared.
Exit Code: 0x00
As you can see: “Target ID 08“, the ID is 08, NOT 8!
Here are some unsuccessful tries (even with 08 was unsuccessful – it might be from our cli version or shell, but it did not work!). Note the last command to get the status for all devices:
root@srv ~ # megacli -DiscardPreservedCache -L8 -a0
Adapter 0: No Virtual Drive has Preserved Cache Data.
Exit Code: 0x00
root@srv ~ # megacli -DiscardPreservedCache -L08 -a0
Adapter 0: No Virtual Drive has Preserved Cache Data.
Exit Code: 0x00
root@srv ~ # megacli -GetPreservedCacheList -a0
Adapter #0
Virtual Drive(Target ID 08): Missing.
Exit Code: 0x00
It reports there is no drive with preserved cache on the very ID, YOU TYPED, but then getting the Preserved cached list there is a drive in the list because 8 is different from 08.
For farther problems getting your new disk in the array you can check our tested replace procedure: megacli – restart a rebuild with a disk in failed state