Hello thanks for choosing Dell.
Could you confirm the SSD is from Dell? Do you have a part # to share?
Respectfully,

@DELL-Young E​ 

The SSD is a DELL product. Here are the specs:


DriveFormFactor: 2.5 inch
Manufacturer: DELL
MediaType: Solid State Drive (SSD)
Model: MZ7KH1T9HAJR0D3
PPID: KR071K37SSK009AS0460A00
SizeInBytes: 1919716163584 Bytes (1.92 TB)

@DELL-Chris H​ 

How can I reformat the drive? It is not visible by the OS and as far as I have looked, there is no option to do so in iDRAC - Storage.


Is there a "format" option in the Setup /Devices/PERC etc menu ?
We have a spare R740 with an H740P PERC card and several spare drives like that.

I also tried a cryptographic erase, but that was also in vain.

@DELL-Chris H​

Neither iDRAC or PERC highlighted the disk as foreign.
I will follow up on the external options to reformat. Is there a particular file system format that works best?

@DELL-Chris H​ 
Also to note, a Cryptographic erase was already attempted. I am not sure if that is sufficient. What the error does reveal is that the pinned configuration is on the controller side. Would a reboot be necessary ?

@DELL-Chris H​ 
One last question.
The only other explanation is that the Controller is preserving the cached configuration for the slot that held the old defective drive. In my case, slot 0:1:7.

Having said this, what would the impact be to the storage system if I selected the "Action" from iDRAC, Storage, and Controller menu, then the PERC controller and ran "Discard Preserved Cache"?
Would that Action delete all the other virtual volumes and RAID sets?
Is it safe to run on a prod system?

@DELL-Joey C​ 

Thank you for the reply.
The original SSD physical drive failed and was a replaced by a new physical SSD which was recovered from an decommissioned server of the same model and generation. The PERC controller seems to have accepted the new [recycled] SSD drive, and has flagged it to be healthy. The problem begins when I try to create a virtual volume (RAID-0) on it and posts the error mentioned at the very beginning of this thread (STOR305: Unable to complete the operation because preserved cache present on the controller.)

The problem is that the PERC controller does not recognize even as a foreign configuration. When I run the foreign configuration action on the controller, it posts that there is no apparent foreign configuration found. 

You stated, "Clearing preserved cache will delete all other virtual volumes." If I understand this correctly, this means complete reset of the storage controller system to zero (tabla rasa). The controller has no information about the configuration of the physical drives. Is this permanent? Does the PERC controller not recognize the presence of the drives to try and restore their configuration from cached config stored on the drives themselves?

You also wrote, "It does not affect the data" [on the disks].

It seems that you want to say that once the preserved cache on the controller is cleared, the PERC H740P should then re-read the cached data on the physical drives, and recognize to import all the physical drives as "foreign" configurations to restore them. However, there is reasonable risk that this might not happen and that the RAID and partition data on the physical drives will not be restored. For this reason, you say, any attempt to clear the preserved cache  should be preceded with a full backup.

Is this correct?

Having said all of the above, are there no other actions that can be taken? It seems to me that clearing the configuration cache is the only thing left to do.