Adding old hard drives from old an old installation

[nonymus]

Hello, I have this problem that I do not know how to solve, basically I had 3 hard drives on my server proxmox, two ssd and hdd (the ssd where I had proxmox installed was 120 gb, the other 280 and hdd 705 gb) the ssd where I had proxmox installed unfortunately got corrupted during an upgrade and everything was lost, luckily I had the virtual machines on the other two hard drives, now the thing is, I have put another new hard drive to replace the ssd that died and I did a new installation of proxmox and now I am trying to reimport the hard drives and virtual machines again without having to format them, is there any way to do this?

P.S: the hard drives I want to import appear in the storage tab.

 

[wbk]

Hi nonymus,

Welcome to the forums

I am trying to reimport the hard drives and virtual machines again without having to format them, is there any way to do this?

Yes, there is!

Proxmox 'knows' the storage that is registered in `/etc/pve/storage.cfg`.

Which kind of storage did you use, as in ZFS, LVM, ...? Depending on that, you'd start the stanza with the one or the other keyword. For example, a snippet of my `storage.cfg` looks like:
# cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg dir: local path /var/lib/vz content vztmpl shared 1 lvm: yunostmp vgname yunostmp content images,rootdir shared 1 lvmthin: yunos thinpool dunnedata vgname allerlei content images,rootdir zfspool: zetta pool zetta content rootdir,images mountpoint /zetta nodes minitix

Good luck!

 

[nonymus]

Hi nonymus,

Welcome to the forums

Yes, there is!

Proxmox 'knows' the storage that is registered in `/etc/pve/storage.cfg`.

Which kind of storage did you use, as in ZFS, LVM, ...? Depending on that, you'd start the stanza with the one or the other keyword. For example, a snippet of my `storage.cfg` looks like:
# cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg dir: local path /var/lib/vz content vztmpl shared 1 lvm: yunostmp vgname yunostmp content images,rootdir shared 1 lvmthin: yunos thinpool dunnedata vgname allerlei content images,rootdir zfspool: zetta pool zetta content rootdir,images mountpoint /zetta nodes minitix

Good luck!

How can i know what file format i used? Cuz i cant remeber

 

[wbk]

How can i know what file format i used?

P.S: the hard drives I want to import appear in the storage tab.

Oh, wait.. I misread that as "the hard drives appear under Disks" (the difference being, "Disks" is just the hardware, "Storage" got meaning to Proxmox).

So you got the storage available, but your containers and VM's on it are not available, let alone running? I _think_ you can just create a new container/VM and point to the corresponding storage to use. I'd start with a small one, copy it for safekeeping, and start experimenting down that path. I can't help you from direct experience, sorry!

You could change the subject of your thread to something like "How to use existing container storage for new container after PVE reinstall". I think that is more to the point, because your hard drives already seem known to Proxmox.

 

[nonymus]

Oh, wait.. I misread that as "the hard drives appear under Disks" (the difference being, "Disks" is just the hardware, "Storage" got meaning to Proxmox).

So you got the storage available, but your containers and VM's on it are not available, let alone running? I _think_ you can just create a new container/VM and point to the corresponding storage to use. I'd start with a small one, copy it for safekeeping, and start experimenting down that path. I can't help you from direct experience, sorry!

You could change the subject of your thread to something like "How to use existing container storage for new container after PVE reinstall". I think that is more to the point, because your hard drives already seem known to Proxmox.

In essence, the hard drives appear in Proxmox. What I don't know is how to reattach them to the new Proxmox installation because they appear, but they don't let me use them

 

[wbk]

What are the contents of your /etc/pve/storage.cfg ?

 

[nonymus]

What are the contents of your /etc/pve/storage.cfg ?

dir: local
path /var/lib/vz
content iso,vztmpl,backup

lvmthin: local-lvm
thinpool data
vgname pve
content rootdir,images

 

[wbk]

These two entries seem to match the first disk in your "Disks" screenshot, don't they? So, yes, there are contents in the "Storage" tab, but they are the new storage locations, on your new disk.

You'll have to match the "Disks" info with what you remember of the contents, to create entries in /etc/pve/storage.cgf. I'd start with just mounting the partitions and browsing the data, that should give an idea of which entries to write.