One highly useful utility for Windows 2000/XP/Windows Server 2003 users is the Disk Partition Utility, aka Diskpart, a command-line interpreter designed as a disk management tool.
In a recent article, I showed you how to use Diskpart to scan for newly added disks. But Diskpart can also be used to create, delete and resize hard drive partitions as well as assign or reassign drive letters.
Note: Any text in parentheses are comments only; they should not be typed along with any commands given.
Create a partition in Windows with Diskpart. Using Diskpart to partition your disk is very beneficial for increasing the I/O performance of hard disks newly added to a RAID array. The documentation for many server applications, such as Microsoft Exchange Server, actually goes so far as to recommend that you should use Diskpart to create your Primary or Extended partitions. (A primary partition an be used as the system partition; an Extended Partition can only be used for additional logical drive assignments.)
To create a partition:
Extend a partition in Windows with Diskpart. When it comes to adding space to a partition or volume, this method is superior to configuring Dynamic Disks. Dynamic Disk extensions only concatenate the newly added space, menaing they merely add the disk space to the "end" of the original partition without restriping the data.
Concatenation isolates performance within each partition and does not offer fault tolerance when the partition is configured in a RAID array. Diskpart allows you to restripe your existing data. This is truly beneficial when the partition is set up i
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n a RAID array, because the existing partition data is spread out across all the drives in the array, rather than just adding new space to the end (like Disk Administrator).
Microsoft's "official" position is that that you cannot use Diskpart to extend your system or boot partition. However, this tip on SearchWinComputing.com on increasing the capacity of your system volume, suggests otherwise.
Note: If you try it or any other method, make sure you have a full backup.
To extend a partition:
Note: It is not necessary, but I normally reboot the server to make sure all is well from a startup standpoint.
To delete a partition in Windows with Diskpart: (Note: You cannot delete an active system or boot partition or a partition with an active page file.)
To wiping (or zero) a disk:
This operation deletes all data on the disk
Final note: Here are four important things to keep in mind regarding Diskpart.
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[IMAGE]Diskpart Technical Guide
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[IMAGE] Introduction
[IMAGE] Diskpart: A command-line for manipulating disk partitions in Windows
[IMAGE] Diskpart utility scans for newly added disks
[IMAGE] Diskpart: Create, extend or delete a partition
About the author:
Tim Fenner (MCSE, MCSA: Messaging, Network+ and A+) is a senior systems administrator who oversees a Microsoft Windows, Exchange and Office environment, as well as an independent consultant who specializes in the design, implementation and management of Windows networks.
