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Replace Diskpart with Windows PowerShell – Basic Storage cmdlets

Thomas Maurer
Updated
1–2 minutes
13 comments on Replace Diskpart with Windows PowerShell – Basic Storage cmdlets

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

get-disk

Now get all partitions

Get-Partition

get-partition

Now get all partitions of disk 0

Get-Partition -DiskNumber 0

get-partitiondisk

Clear a Disk

Get-Disk 1 | Clear-Disk -RemoveData

clear-disk

Create a new partition

New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize

new-partition

Format this volume

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

format-volume

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

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

format-volume1

Change driveletter

Set-Partition -DriveLetter E -NewDriveLetter T

set-partition

Set a partition active

Set-Partition -DriveLetter T -IsActive $true

set-partition1

Remove a partition

Remove-Partition -DriveLetter T

remove-partition

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

online disk

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

replace-diskpart

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Thomas Maurer
Thomas is the EMEA Global Black Belt (GBB) for Sovereign Cloud at Microsoft, helping organizations across the region harness Microsoft’s sovereign, hybrid, multicloud, and edge solutions. He works directly with C-level leaders and technical teams to remove roadblocks, accelerate digital transformation, and shape long-term cloud strategies that meet business and regulatory needs. With over 15 years of experience in cloud and datacenter, including his previous role as Principal Program Manager and Chief Evangelist for Azure Hybrid, he combines deep technical expertise with a passion for customer success. He specializes in creating scalable architectures, solution accelerators, and thought leadership that drive adoption and innovation on Azure. Thomas is a passionate community advocate and frequently speaks at industry events such as Microsoft Ignite and Microsoft TechDays. He shares his expertise through his Cloud and Datacenter Blog at www.thomasmaurer.ch and on LinkedIn and X.com www.twitter.com/thomasmaurer.

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13 responses

  1. Lee Binder Avatar
    Lee Binder

    hoi Thomas. Just tried this w. the Win 7 (64) powershell – no go, does not know these commands .. Seems MS vamped up the Win 8 PS w. a bunch of new commands. Do you know if there’s a way to upgrade the Win 7 PS to the level of the one from Win8?

    Reply
    1. Thomas Maurer Avatar
      Thomas Maurer

      There is a CTP of PowerShell 3.0 for Windows 7, but I am not sure if this will include the Storage or Network cmdlets

      Reply
  2. Carlos Perez Avatar
    Carlos Perez

    Can one also extend the FS on a partition like with Diskpart? That has been the number 1 use I have had for that command when expanding boot volumes or SAN connected volumes to allocate more space.

    Reply
    1. Thomas Maurer Avatar
      Thomas Maurer

      Yes there is a resize-partition cmdlet :)

      Reply
  3. Philipp Avatar
    Philipp

    Thomas, vielen Dank, bist einfach nur leiwand ;)
    lg aus Ö

    Reply
  4. Joe Gasper Avatar
    Joe Gasper

    And you can work with mount points, too.

    $myDisk = “2”
    $myLabel = “Bin”
    $myMount = “M:\Bin”
    Get-Disk $myDisk | Set-Disk -IsOffline $false
    Get-Disk $myDisk |Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle GPT
    Get-Disk $myDisk | New-Partition -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel $myLabel -AllocationUnitSize 65536 -Confirm:$false
    Add-PartitionAccessPath -DiskNumber $myDisk -PartitionNumber 2 -AccessPath $myMount

    Reply
  5. craig Avatar
    craig

    how about replacing diskpart “create vdisk”? I see there is a “New-VirtualDisk” but that does not require/use a path and .vhd name.

    Reply
    1. Thomas Maurer Avatar
      Thomas Maurer

      The New-VirtualDisk cmdlet is not used for VHD or VHDX files. The New-VirtualDisk cmdlets is used to create new Storage Spaces (Virtual Disk) on a Storage Pool. The command you are looking for is New-VHD :)

      Reply
  6. craig Avatar
    craig

    Thanks Tom. I saw the VHD cmdlets and thought they were for VMs only but now I get it. In case it helps someone else, here is what I have, 2 lines . Together they create the vhd, mount, initialize, and format.

    New-vhd c:\vhdtest.vhd –SizeBytes 130GB -Dynamic

    Mount-VHD –Path c:\vhdtest.vhd -PassThru | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR -PassThru | New-Partition -UseMaximumSize -DriveLetter x | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel testlabel -confirm:$false

    #Dismount-VHD –Path c:\vhdtest.vhd ## to run if you are playing and want to unmounnt and delete to try again.

    Reply
  7. Xmblpb Avatar
    Xmblpb

    Just vanished my partition scheme with Powers Hell.

    Only set active windows partition and this immediately delete two non-windows partitions.
    This was never happens when i’ve set active partition with Disk Management.

    Reply
  8. Adam Conkle - MSFT Avatar
    Adam Conkle – MSFT

    DiskPart.exe – Powershell Parser for Windows Server 2008 R2
    https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/DiskPartexe-Powershell-0f7a1bab

    Reply
  9. Vlad Avatar
    Vlad

    In part “Set a partition active”, change $ture for $true.

    Reply
    1. Thomas Maurer Avatar
      Thomas Maurer

      uf thanks :)

      Reply

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