Windows VM volumes show offline after reboot

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Following a reboot of a Windows virtual machine, verification with the diskpart tool inside the guest operating system may indicate that the disks are Online, while certain volumes remain in an Offline state. 

For example:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          XXX GB   XXX MB        *
  Disk 1    Online          XXX GB   XXX GB        *
  Disk 2    Online          XXX GB   XXX GB        *

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D   ####         UDF    DVD-ROM      XXX MB  Healthy
  Volume 1                             Partition    XXX GB  Healthy    Offline
  Volume 2                             Partition    XXX MB  Healthy    Offline

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

This behavior is temporary and occurs during the volume initialization process within the guest OS after a system reboot.

Resolution

Wait for a few minutes after the Windows guest os has fully initiated, then check the volume status again.