Local disk not visible in 'New Datastore' wizard of ESXi during an attempt to create a new datastore

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Newly created local disk is not available for selection in 'New Datastore' wizard of the ESXi host when attempting to create new Local VMFS Datastore

Environment

ESXi
VMFS

Cause

In order to be able to create a new datastore, there must be atleast 4194304 unused sectors (2GB). See the note under step 7 of Creating vSphere Datastores

The disk already has other partitions using up the entire capacity if the drive

Resolution

If the disk was repurposed from another environment, you must clear its partition table to remove the partitions before you can create a VMFS datastore out of it. For instructions, see Clear a Device Partition Table in theVMware Host Client
Note: This is an irrevesible change as it will permanently remove the partitions hence, ensure that the data is no longer required.

Then, we may create a VMFS Datastore using the disk.For instructions, see Create a VMFS Datastore in theVMware Host Client