Dell PowerVault MD 32XX/36XX Series Storage Arrays CLI Guide

You must initialize a physical disk when you have moved physical disks that were previously part of a disk group from one storage array to another. If you do not move the entire set of physical disks, the disk group and virtual disk information on the physical disks that you move is incomplete. Each physical disk that you move contains only part of the information defined for the virtual disk and disk group. To be able to reuse the physical disks to create a new disk group and virtual disk, you must erase all old information from the physical disks by initializing the physical disk.

When you initialize a physical disk, all old disk group and virtual disk information is erased, and the physical disk is returned to an unassigned state. Returning a physical disk to an unassigned state adds unconfigured capacity to a storage array. You can use this capacity to create additional disk groups and virtual disks.