Replace Diskpart with Windows PowerShell – Basic Storage cmdlets

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 8

Last week I made a blog post about how you can create a USB drive for Windows To Go. In my post I used diskpart.exe to format the USB drive. Now we don’t live in the stone age anymore, so I did the same with the new version of Windows PowerShell coming in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8.

Now here some basic cmdlets to do some simple storage operations, like clean a disk, create a partition and so on.

Lets start simple

List all disks

Get-Disk

Now get all partitions

Get-Partition

Now get all partitions of disk 0

Get-Partition -DiskNumber 0

Clear a Disk

Get-Disk 1 | Clear-Disk -RemoveData

Create a new partition

New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize

Format this volume

Get-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -PartitionNumber 1 | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS

Create new partition and format it with the label “USB”:

New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel USB

Change driveletter

Set-Partition -DriveLetter E -NewDriveLetter T

Set a partition active

Set-Partition -DriveLetter T -IsActive $ture

Remove a partition

Remove-Partition -DriveLetter T

Bring a disk online

 Set-Disk 1 -isOffline $false

Remove Readonly flag

 Set-Disk 1 -isReadOnly $false

Initialize Disk with GPT

 Initialize-Disk 1 -PartitionStyle GPT

This is some basic knowledge about the storage module in PowerShell v3. Lets see how we can change the commands from using diskpart to Windows PowerShell.

Diskpart.exe

select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=e

PowerShell:

Get-Disk 1 | Clear-Disk -RemoveData
New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize -IsActive -DriveLetter E | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel USB

Windows 8: How to create a Windows To Go USB drive

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Microsoft released a new feature called “Windows To Go” with Windows 8. With this feature it is possible to boot your Windows 8 from a USB drive on any PC. In this post I show you how you can do this.

Requirements

UBS drive with 16GB free Space
A PC running Windows 8
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO

Step-by-Step

First let me show you my setup to begin with.

I have my System Drive (C:), the USB drive I want to use (E:) and the Windows 8 ISO mounted (F:)

Run diskpart
With “list disk” you can list all your disk
Now select your usb drive (select disk 1) and clean it. After that you can create a new partition and format that and close diskpart.
```
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=e
exit
```
Now in my case the ISO is mounted as drive F:. Now with dism I can apply the Windows Image to my USB drive (E:)
```
dism /apply-image /imagefile=f:\sources\install.wim /index:1 /applydir:e:\
```
Now you have to make this drive bootable
```
bcdboot e:\windows /s e: /f ALL
```
now you are done. You can now boot your USB drive. The first boot will take some time to setup.

If you want to know more about Windows To Go I recommend you the Microsoft session from the BUILD conference.

Extending a Microsoft Hyper-V R2 Cluster Shared Volume

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

This quick blog post shows you how you can simply extend a Hyper-V R2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Cluster Shared Volume without any downtime. First you expand your LUN in your OEM SAN management software. This is mostly of the time nothing special. But after that you have to expand the Cluster Shared Volume.

In your OEM SAN Management Software expand the size of the LUN or disk
Open the Microsoft Failover Cluster Manager and check the CSV coordinator for the disk or LUN you have expanded. The CSV coordinator is the disk owner in the cluster
Login to the CSV coordinator machine
If you are using the GUI version you can use the Disk Management under Storage in the Server Manager. You can now rescan for disks and then expand the Disk or LUN.
If you are using Hyper-V or Windows Server Core you can use diskpart
First start the cmd and open diskpart
type rescan
now type list volume, to list all volumes
Use select volume IDNumber, the IDNumber is the number you could see with list volume in the previous step.
now you can type extend
with list volume you can see the results

In some environments sometimes if you need to expand a Cluster Shared volume it makes more sense to create a new one and move the Virtual Machines with Storage Migration but this cannot be done without downtime.

Boot from VHD

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

If you need to run multiple instances of Windows on your computer, you have different options. First you could use software like Microsoft Virtual PC or VMware Workstation to run a virtual instance. But if you need more performance, or you have to run for example Microsoft Hyper-V you need a native installed Operating System. Until Microsoft added the feature “boot from VHD”, you had to create different partitions for each installation. Since Microsoft allowed you to use VHD to boot you won a lot of flexibility.

This guide should show you how you can install a new operation system in a VHD, which you can boot from.

First boot from a Windows Setup DVD or USB Stick
On the screen where you could click “Install now” you have also a “Repair your computer” option in the bottom left corner. Click on this option or use the short cut “Shift + F10” to boot in to the command line mode.
Enter diskpart
Create a new VHD file
create vdisk file=”filepathandfilename” type=”expandable” maximum=maxsiize
Now you have to attach this VHD
select vidsk file=”filepathandfilename”
attach vdisk
Now you can switch back to the “Install now” screenby pressing “ALT+TAB” and now do the setup on the new create vdisk.
If you start Windows the next time you will see the new and the old Windows in the boot menu.

If you want to add a already existing VHD to the boot menu you can use bdcedit to edit the boot menu.

bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "New Windows 7 Installation" 
bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd 
bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd 
bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on

You can get more information here.

Cisco UCS Hyper-V Cluster – Configure Blade Servers – Part 4

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Thomas Maurer

After we have installed the Cisco Blade Servers we now have to do some configuration on the Hosts.

First I activate Remote Management like Remote Desktop, Remote MMC and Powershell.

I add a Firewall rule for Remote Disk Managment

 netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Volume Management" new enable=yes

After adding this firewall rule, I install the Multipath I/O feature
```
 ocsetup MultipathIo 
```
Now you can use the MPclaim command-line tool to manage Multipath I/O
To view all detected enterprise storage:
```
 Mpclaim -e
```
Add MPIO support for Fibre Channel devices:
```
 mpclaim.exe -r -i -d < _VendorID> < _ProductID>
```
Important: Note that the vendor string length is 8 characters, the product string length is 16 characters, and both fields are padded with spaces as needed.
More Information about the MPclaim command-line tool
With diskpart you can now see the disks. And you can format the disks with NTFS. Important after that you should take the disks offline to use them in the cluster.
In the Configuration Menu enable the Cluster Feature.
On each note the all Cluster disks offline.
```
select disk 2
disk offline
```

In the next post we will configure the Network Adapters of the Cluster notes and create the virtual networks.

Howto Attach / Detach VHD in Windows Server 2008 R2

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Thomas Maurer

This little HowTo shows you how you can attach or detach VHDs (Virtual Hard Disk) in Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. Basically you can use the Disk Management in the Server Manager to do that.

Open Disk Management
Now click on “More actions” and “Attach VHD”
Now you can choose the VHD you want to attach
As you can see you have now a new Virtual Hard Drive in your Disk Management
To Detach the VHD right click on it and click on “Detach VHD”

You can also attach and detach VHD’s via diskpart.exe

Attach VHD via Diskpart.exe

diskpart
select vdisk file="D:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\data.vhd"
attach vdisk

Detach VHD via Diskpart.exe

diskpart
select vdisk file="D:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\data.vhd"
attach vdisk

Cheatsheet: Using Diskpart on a Server Core installation #4

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Thomas Maurer

Using Diskpart on a Server Core installation. Disk Administration or Partition a disk.

Create a new partition and format a partition

SELECT DISK 0 CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY ASSIGN LETTER=E SELECT PARTITION 1 FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK EXIT

Commands you may then issue at the DISKPART prompt:

LIST Disk
LIST Partition
LIST Volume

SELECT Disk n
SELECT Volume n
SELECT Partition n

DETAIL Disk
DETAIL Partition
DETAIL volume

HELP
REM (remark/comment)
EXIT

Commands to Manage Basic Disks:

(set the current in-focus partition to be the system partition)

ASSIGN (allocate the next free drive letter)
ASSIGN LETTER=l (Choose a free letter)

CREATE PARTITION Primary Size=50000 (50 GB)
CREATE PARTITION Extended Size=25000
CREATE PARTITION logical Size=25000

DELETE Partition

EXTEND Size=10000

REMOVE letter=l (Remove drive letter l from the in-focus partition)
REMOVE /ALL (Remove ALL current drive letters and mount points)

Commands to Manage Dynamic Disks:

(set the current in-focus partition to be the system partition)

ASSIGN (allocate the next free drive letter)
ASSIGN LETTER=l (Choose a free letter)

ADD disk=n (Add a mirror to the in-focus SIMPLE volume on the specified disk.)

BREAK disk=n (Break the current in-focus mirror)

CREATE VOLUME Simple Size=n Disk=n
CREATE VOLUME Stripe Size=n Disk=n,n,...
CREATE VOLUME Raid Size=n Disk=n,n,...

DELETE DISK
DELETE PARTITION
DELETE VOLUME

EXTEND disk=n [Size=n]
IMPORT
ONLINE

REMOVE letter=l (Remove drive letter l from the in-focus volume)
REMOVE /ALL (Remove ALL current drive letters and mount points)
RETAIN
Commands to Convert Disks:

CONVERT mbr CONVERT gpt CONVERT dynamic CONVERT basic
CLEAN ALL (remove all partition and volume info from the hard drive)
RESCAN