Reference to "PHYSICALDRIVE#" in zpool status can be(come) wrong / misleading

[besterino]

ZFS version: zfswin-2.3.1rc14
zfs-kmod-zfswin-2.3.1rc14
Windows Server 2022(21H2 (OS Build 20348.4529)

So I switched physical drives a bit around recently (added and removed, moved to different port etc.).

The good: ZFS doesn't get confused which disk belongs to which pool, everything continues to work.

The interesting: zpool.exe does get confused.

When I created the pool the two pool drives (ADATA) were PHYSICALDRIVE1 and PHYSICALDRIVE2. After switching drives back and forth, they are now/currently PHYSICALDRIVE3 and PHYSICALDRIVE4.

According to zpool, however, the pool still consists of PHYISCALDRIVE1 and PHYSICALDRIVE2, which would mean instead of 2x2TB drives, one non-existing drive and one 250GB SSD... catastrophic if it were true.

Is it possible to use a unique identifier for zpool to always correctly show the "pool member drives"?

PS C:\Users\Administrator> Get-WmiObject Win32_DiskDrive


Partitions : 2
DeviceID   : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4
Model      : ADATA SX8200PNP
Size       : 2048407280640
Caption    : ADATA SX8200PNP

Partitions : 3
DeviceID   : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
Model      : SAMSUNG MZAL4256HBJD-00BL2
Size       : 256052966400
Caption    : SAMSUNG MZAL4256HBJD-00BL2

Partitions : 2
DeviceID   : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3
Model      : ADATA SX8200PNP
Size       : 2048407280640
Caption    : ADATA SX8200PNP



PS C:\Users\Administrator> zpool status
  pool: zfs
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 00:25:09 with 0 errors on Wed Jan  7 22:46:18 2026
config:

        NAME                STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        zfs                 ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-0          ONLINE       0     0     0
            physicaldrive1  ONLINE       0     0     0
            physicaldrive2  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors
PS C:\Users\Administrator

[lundman]

Ah yep, what zpool status shows (vdev_path) is just a cosmetic name. I thought we fixed it, by updating the name on import though.

What is actually used is vdev_physpath.