I really like Windows Server Core. The concept has come of age in Windows 2012.
I needed to add a new disk to a virtual machine – that’s easy using the Hyper-V cmdlets. But what about formating the disk.
A module new to Windows 2012 & Windows can be used. Its the Storage module. I’ve not had chance, or reason, to play with this module yet. So many cmdlets so little time.
Start with viewing the disks:
PS C:\Users\richard> Get-Disk | ft -a
Number Friendly Name OperationalStatus Total Size Partition Style
—— ————- —————– ———- —————
0 Virtual HD ATA Device Online 120 GB MBR
1 Microsoft Virtual Disk Offline 127 GB RAW
Disk 1 is the new disk so need to initialise it.
PS C:\Users\richard> Initialize-Disk -Number 1 -PartitionStyle MBR
View the disks again
PS C:\Users\richard> Get-Disk | ft -a
Number Friendly Name OperationalStatus Total Size Partition Style
—— ————- —————– ———- —————
0 Virtual HD ATA Device Online 120 GB MBR
1 Microsoft Virtual Disk Online 127 GB MBR
Create a partition on the disk – -useMaximimSize means use all of the disk for this partition
PS C:\Users\richard> New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize -DriveLetter R
Now view the partitions
PS C:\Users\richard> Get-Partition | ft -a
Disk Number: 0
PartitionNumber DriveLetter Offset Size Type
————— ———– —— —- —-
1 1048576 350 MB IFS
2 C 368050176 119.66 GB IFS
Disk Number: 1
PartitionNumber DriveLetter Offset Size Type
————— ———– —— —- —-
1 R 1048576 127 GB Logical
And finally format the new disk:
PS C:\Users\richard> Get-Volume | where DriveLetter -eq R | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel Backup
Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Warning, all data on the volume will be lost!
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is “Y”): Y
You get a nice friendly warning (you could bypass using –Confirm $false) and the format happens
You could pipe the cmdlets together to do everything in one pass. Best of all – the cmdlets are WMI based.
