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 V5030 error code CMMVC8485E

hakim aithatrit's profile image
hakim aithatrit posted Wed November 05, 2025 05:44 AM

Dear Team

A customer has an Storwize V5030 storage system.
A new drive was inserted into one of the available slots in order to be added to the storage pool.

When attempting to set the drive to the “candidate” state, the system displays the following error message:

CMMVC8485E – The command cannot be initiated because the drive that you have specified has not been formatted with the correct protection information schema.

To resolve the issue, the customer executed the following command to format the drive:

chdrive -task format 2

However, this operation also failed, returning the following error message:

CMMVC6624E – The command cannot be initiated because the drive is not in an appropriate state to perform the task.

Best regards,

Question:
Is it possible to format the drive while it is in the “unused” state, without first switching it to the “candidate” state?
If so, which command or procedure should be applied to properly initialize the drive before integrating it into the storage pool?

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Uwe Schreiber's profile image
Uwe Schreiber IBM Champion posted Wed November 05, 2025 11:05 AM

Hi Hakim,

the drive must be in state "unused", if you want to use the format command.

According to the screenshots, the affected drive is ID 23 ... so the command would be "chdrive -task format 23"

The command "chdrive -task format 2" will try to format drive with ID 2.

Nezih Boyacioglu's profile image
Nezih Boyacioglu IBM Champion posted Wed November 05, 2025 12:23 PM

I experienced something similar once. It looked exactly like the original drive, but it was a third-party copy and when we try to update it's firmware it fails. And the firmware level of your drive is different than the others. The other drives firmware level is B5A8 (according to IBM supported drive and fw levels site - the model number is ST1800MM0008). The unused one's firmware level is J5H9, and its model number is HUC101818CS420. Would you try update the firmware for the new drive?

hakim aithatrit's profile image
hakim aithatrit posted Thu November 06, 2025 01:29 AM
Thank you for your clarification.
We have indeed executed the command on the correct drive (ID 23) as suggested:
 
chdrive -task format 23
 
 
Unfortunately, the operation still failed with the same error message.
 
Please advise if there is any additional step required to properly reinitialize the drive before it can be set to the candidate state.
 
Best regards

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