Working with Disk Devices

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Jan 18, 2023 by Sean Hastert
2 min read

Disk Devices provide the underlying storage for SoftNAS and Storage Pools. Disk devices are attached to SoftNAS at the virtualization platform layer, often as virtual hard disks (e.g., VMDK in VMware, EBS volumes in EC2).

  1. Partition All finds all devices without a partition and creates a partition on each device.

    Devices which are in use or already contain a partition are ignored.

  2. Create Partition adds a partition to a device that does not contain a partition.

  3. Remove Partition removes an unused partition.

    Devices which are marked as "Used in pool" are not eligible for partition removal.
  4. Refresh will rescan the available devices and display up-to-date information.

  5. Add Device will add a new device configured to your liking.

    On VMware, this option will not be present.

  6. Edit Device allows you to edit certain configuration settings of devices.

  7. Delete Device will delete a dynamic device that is no longer in use.

    Many devices might not be recoverable once deleted!



  1. Device shows a list of devices.

  2. Total size shows the amount of data storage available on the raw device before partitioning and adding to a storage pool.

  3. Make and model shows the vendor and model of the device.

    The type of device is shown in parenthesis.


  4. Device Usage provides details about how the device is currently used or what is necessary to make the device usable.

    The device can be in one of three states:

    • Needs partitioning
    • Available to assign to a storage pool.
    • Used in a pool.


  5. On some devices, Extra Disk Info will provide additional information.