View source for Passthrough Physical Disk to Virtual Machine (VM)

By adding the raw physical device to the Virtual machine, you can test installers and other disk repair tools that work with disk controllers like <code>ddrescue</code>, Clonezilla or Ubuntu Rescue Remix.


'''NOTE''': This guide is meant for QEMU/KVM based Virtual Machines, '''not''' for Container. For the latter see https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/container-with-physical-disk.42280/#post-203292 

As the disk is attached to the physical and virtual host, this will also prevent Virtual Machine live migration. A second side effect is host system IO wait, when running ddrescue, other VM's running on the host can stutter.

= Attach Pass Through Disk =
== Identify Disk ==
Before adding a physical disk to host make note of vendor, serial  so that you'll know which disk to share in /dev/disk/by-id/ 

=== lshw ===
lshw is not installed by default on Proxmox VE (see <code>lsblk</code> for that below), you can install it by executing <code>apt install lshw</code>
<pre>
lshw -class disk -class storage

...
           *-disk
                description: ATA Disk
                product: ST3000DM001-1CH1
                vendor: Seagate
                physical id: 0.0.0
                bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0
                logical name: /dev/sda
                version: CC27
                serial: Z1F41BLC
                size: 2794GiB (3TB)
                configuration: ansiversion=5 sectorsize=4096
...
</pre>

Note that device names like <code>/dev/sdc</code> should never be used, as this can change between reboots.
Use the stable <code>/dev/disk/by-id</code> paths instead.
Check by listing all of that directory then look for the disk added by matching serial number from lshw and the physical disk:
<pre>
ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3000DM001-1CH166_Z1F41BLC
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Jan 21 10:10 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3000DM001-1CH166_Z1F41BLC -> ../../sda
</pre>
or try
<pre>
ls -l /dev/disk/by-id | grep Z1F41BLC
</pre>

=== List disk by-id with lsblk ===

The <code>lsblk</code> is pre-installed, you can print and map the serial and WWN identifiers of attached disks using the following two commands:
 lsblk -o +MODEL,SERIAL,WWN
 ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/

You can also use an extended one liner to get the path directly:

<pre>
lsblk |awk 'NR==1{print $0" DEVICE-ID(S)"}NR>1{dev=$1;printf $0" ";system("find /dev/disk/by-id -lname \"*"dev"\" -printf \" %p\"");print "";}'|grep -v -E 'part|lvm'
</pre>


<pre>
NAME                         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT DEVICE-ID(S)
sda                            8:0    0   7.3T  0 disk   /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500c35cd719 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST8000DM004-2CX188_ZCT1DNY1
sdb                            8:16   1    29G  0 disk   /dev/disk/by-id/usb-Generic_STORAGE_DEVICE-0:0
sdc                            8:32   0 931.5G  0 disk   /dev/disk/by-id/usb-JMicron_Generic_0123456789ABCDEF-0:0
sdd                            8:48   0   1.8T  0 disk   /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500661eeebd /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST2000DX001-1CM164_Z1E783H2
</pre>


[https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/387855/make-lsblk-list-devices-by-id make-lsblk-list-devices-by-id]

=== Short List ===
<pre>
find /dev/disk/by-id/ -type l|xargs -I{} ls -l {}|grep -v -E '[0-9]$' |sort -k11|cut -d' ' -f9,10,11,12
</pre>

<pre>
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST8000DM004-2CX188_ZCT1DNY1 -> ../../sda
/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500c35cd719 -> ../../sda
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Generic_STORAGE_DEVICE-0:0 -> ../../sdb
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-JMicron_Generic_0123456789ABCDEF-0:0 -> ../../sdc
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST2000DX001-1CM164_Z1E783H2 -> ../../sdd
/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500661eeebd -> ../../sdd
</pre>

== Update Configuration ==
<pre>
qm set  592  -scsi2 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3000DM001-1CH166_Z1F41BLC
</pre>

<pre>
update VM 592: -scsi2 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3000DM001-1CH166_Z1F41BLC
</pre>

== Check Configuration File == 
<pre>
grep Z1F41BLC /etc/pve/qemu-server/592.conf
</pre>
<pre>
scsi2: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3000DM001-1CH166_Z1F41BLC,size=2930266584K
</pre>

== Stop and Restart KVM Virtual Machine ==
You may need to configure the guest operating system now that the disk is available.

= Tutorial =
[https://dannyda.com/2020/08/26/how-to-passthrough-hdd-ssd-physical-disks-to-vm-on-proxmox-vepve/ Example with screenshots]

= Disk Recovery Tools =
# Ubuntu Rescue Remix - [http://www.geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-even-when-hard-drive-is-damaged/ how to use Ubuntu Rescue Remix and Ddrescue]
# ddrescue
# gnu ddrescue
# Clonezilla
# TestDisk 
# PhotoRec
# Recuva
# Foremost
# Parted Magic
# SpinRite - Low Cost Commercial - Smartctl tutoral for Proxmox VE planned