source : http://www.dectrader.com/docs/set01/26874/c01394278.html#pf33
If a disk drive’s metadata identifies it as part of a nonexistent virtual disk, the drive is considered a leftover. SMU reports the drive’s virtual disk as Leftover.
The storage system uses metadata to identify virtual disk members after restarting or replacing enclosures. A drive becomes a leftover when it is removed from the enclosure where that drive is part of a virtual disk, and either the virtual disk is deleted and the drive is reinserted, or the drive is inserted in a different system.
Before you can use the drive a different virtual disk or as a spare, you must clear the metadata. To clear metadata from drives:
- Select Manage > Utilities > Disk Drive Utilities > Clear Metadata. An enclosure view is displayed in which only Leftover and Available drives are selectable. Available drives are considered to have had their metadata cleared, but are selectable in case a drive with partial metadata has been inserted into the system.
- Select the drives whose metadata you want to clear.
- Click Clear Metadata For Selected Disk Drives
Re-Join Physical Disk to VDisk RAID
- In the HP MSA Storage Management Utility, Right click on the affected vdisk and select Configuration > Manage Dedicated Spares
- Your disk should appear in the list of available drives with a state of AVAIL. Tick the drive, then click the Modify Spares button.
- The disk will be re-joined to the array. Initially it may be listed as a spare, but the MSA will automatically re-join the disk as an active member of the RAID if this is how it was originally configured.
- The array will begin the Reconstruction process automatically. This can take a very long time depending on the size of your drives.
- In this situation, original SPARE has now become AVAIL. So, re-add this AVAIL disk as SPARE using above steps. After setting this as spare – this disk will now show a status of: VDISKSP or SPARE