[SOLVED] New Proxmox 9.1 Installation not seeing VMs on Separate SSD

Jocky Wilson

New Member
Mar 7, 2025
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Hi All,

I have a Server with two SSDs: One is a 1TB NVME on which I'd installed Proxmox 8, and the other is a 4TB SSD with my VMs on. I decided to blow away the Proxmox 8 installation on the NVME by installing a clean Proxmox 9.1 ISO. (I didn't touch the 4TB SSD). My Server is back up and running Proxmox 9.1, however it isn't seeing the VMs on the 4TB SSD.

Proxmox can still see that my 4TB drive is present (/dev/sda). It can also see my VMs when I run LVS on the console. But the VMs themselves don't show up in the Web Interface.

If I try to start a VM using the 'qm start' command in the CLI, it comes back with "'nodes/PVE1/qemu-server/100.conf' does not exist". I'm guess that I need to create that conf file but I don't know where I'd put it or what data I would need to populate it with.

Any assistance or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Jocky
 
Hi @Jocky Wilson ,

You did not have VMs on the second disk. You only had VM disks there. Your VM configuration was stored on the disk that you "blew away".

The simplest way to recover is to create a new VMs with the same IDs as your old ones. That way you can directly match the disks.
The next step is to create a Storage Pool that would point to the second disk.
Finally, you need to rescan the disks: qm disk rescan. This will bring the disks into the VM config as "unusedX" devices. You can now "edit" them and assign to a disk bus.

If you had any customized VM configuration - that is gone now. You need to redo it.

Good luck


Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox
 
Hi @Jocky Wilson ,

You did not have VMs on the second disk. You only had VM disks there. Your VM configuration was stored on the disk that you "blew away".

The simplest way to recover is to create a new VMs with the same IDs as your old ones. That way you can directly match the disks.
The next step is to create a Storage Pool that would point to the second disk.
Finally, you need to rescan the disks: qm disk rescan. This will bring the disks into the VM config as "unusedX" devices. You can now "edit" them and assign to a disk bus.

If you had any customized VM configuration - that is gone now. You need to redo it.

Good luck


Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox
Hi bbgeek17,
Thanks for the very quick reply! :).

It's taken me a bit of time but I've got there now, thanks to you!!! :)

I've created a new VM with the same ID as my old one. Straightforward
When I try to create a new Storage pool (using lvm-thin so a Thinpool in my case) on my 4TB SSD with the VM disks on it, however it would let me as it turned out there was already one there.

It took me quiet some time to work out how to edit the <vm_ID>.conf file to point it at the old vm disk. But I eventually figured it out and finally ran your 'qm disk rescan' command and it worked.

Many thanks!!!

Will