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.