Re: Diskpart
Alfonzo Liebenstein
Before you can use diskpart commands, you must first list, and then select an object to give it focus. After an object has focus, any diskpart commands that you type will act on that object.
When you select an object, the focus remains on that object until you select a different object. For example, if the focus is set on disk 0 and you select volume 8 on disk 2, the focus shifts from disk 0 to disk 2, volume 8.
You can only give focus to a partition on the selected disk. After a partition has focus, the related volume (if any) also has focus. After a volume has focus, the related disk and partition also have focus if the volume maps to a single specific partition. If this isn't the case, focus on the disk and partition are lost.
You can view a list of options associated to each command by running the main command followed by what is available to that specific command. Running list by itself will display the four parameters below:
I'm trying to get a bootable external USB drive, from which to install Server 2008 R2, but all the online help I find includes a FORMAT comment in the DISKPART session. My diskpart displays a list of commands in response to the format command, i.e. there is no format command. Here is an example of the command sequence I'm trying to run on XP SP 3:
Right click My Computer, then select Manage. The go to Disk Management and select the partition you created. Right click on it and select Format. You'll be able to choose FAT32 from there and you're done.
We maintain quite a few enctrypted laptops in my organization. As a result, no deployments will run until we perform diskpart. I already have a correct script file in place that will automate the commands needed. What I would like is to automate the actual diskpart command. Currently, once I boot using a USB flash drive, I have to press F8 to get the command window, I then have to switch to the root of the flash drive and type diskpart /s diskpart.txt. I would like this process to be automatic once I boot using the flash drive. How can I do this?
I would think adding a command line to the start of your Task Sequence would do the trick. Try a test, open your Task Sequence and then click the 'Add' button and select 'General' and then 'Run Command Line.' Under the Command Line in the new entry try the following and see if it works (without the quotes)...
Have you tried the partioning tools within the Task Sequence to see if you can get them to do this for you? I use it to create a 1.5 gig partition for the boot files, DaRT, and Bit Locker (if needed in the future) and it works well for me.
BTW, why are you using Diskpart? It will not remove any encrypted data so if you run file recovery software it will find a lot of what was on the drive. I work with high security stuff as well but we run Department of Defence Wipe which takes 7 passes of the drive and will remove everything.
After your TS has run Diskpart are you running a 'Format and Partition Disk' to create the new partition for Windows to be applied to? I set the first command in my TS to restart in Win PE and the next step is to partition the hard disk and then apply Windows to the partition.
The diskpart has to be executed before I can begin execution of the actual OS Task Sequence. Otherwise, the encrypted HDD cannot be written to. This is why i want to execute the diskpart before anything else. There are the steps needed in order:
I have tried to incorporate diskpart into the task sequence without any luck. The encrypted disk prevents the TS .wim file from writing to it. Therefore, diskpart must be executed before winPE actually starts.
If you mount your boot image using imagex, there's a file called TSconfig.ini, the other files are the ones you will create and add to it but also needs to be in teh same directory as the TSconfig.ini.
I have incorporated this script as a package and it worked, this was put in at the first step before naming the system and formatting and apply the WIM. You could try this and see if it works with your current TS w/o creating a new boot wim. If anything you would only need the 2 new files and not the TSconfig.ini if you want to make a package. I havent really tested it out with many systems but it worked on all that I tried. If it odesn't work for you then put it on the boot media instead, that definitely works.
If I have a full SSD and clean it with diskpart clean, will the SSD controller receive a TRIM command (assuming I'm running in AHCI mode)? This would be crucial for performance or even healthiness of the SSD because otherwise it wouldn't know that all data is invalid and can be overwritten at will.
I'm writing this out of suspicion it doesn't get a TRIM because I have ruined two Surface Pros so far while testing a reimaging process that involves a clean command. The devices got ever slower and at some time stopped working altogether. A missing TRIM would be consistent with this behavior.
I'm not aware of any utilities for Windows that can TRIM an entire drive. There are quite a few options for linux. blkdiscard is probably the easiest to use. hdparam --trim-sector-ranges is also an option.
I get so sick and tired of this... I ALWAYS have problems with bitdefender blocking stuff that is perfectly fine. I wish it would at least ask you instead of just upright blocking it. I run diskpart to clean hard drive/flash drive partitions and EVERY TIME I use the clean function bitdefender blocks it saying that it stopped a harmful action or something... I understand the though of it, but something like diskpart is a common function in Windows 7. I can sometimes get it to work if I disable Bitdefender completely. But most of the time I have to fight with it to work. Even with Bitdefender completely disabled, I am still having problems with it. I used to be an avid support of Bitdefender, but not with the some of the stupid things that it does now days I find it hard to recommend it to other people. This is not the only function its blocked me from doing. There are others that this happened to as well, I just can't remember then as well because I don't use it as often. Now days if you have internet access its almost a must to have AV software, but with issues like these when its so invasion that it disrupts your use of the computer it just gets annoying. Can you please tell me why that it wont at LEAST give you the option to ALLOW or CANCEL or something like that instead of just making a bold assumption that diskpart is ran it will be used for mal-purpose? Thats almost like saying "oh notepad is going to overwrite your previous document, better block that as well". What I'm wanting to know is, why do I have so many problems with diskpart when bitdefender is installed? I turned every option in security settings off including Antivirus, realtime scanning is off. Why is it still blocking it??? Why should I have to go to safe mode everytime I want to use diskpart??
paul, what options do you have for fixing this issue? the only one i know of is to build new partitions and transfer your data over. also, i think that new partitions on server 2008 are aligned properly by default, but existing mis-aligned partitions that are upgraded to server 2008 will remain mis-aligned.
A little Powershell and WMI can return the disk alignment information as well as the logical disk to physical partition links. The wmic and diskpart solutions do not list the logical disks. Also the nice thing about Powershell and wmic is that unlike diskpart these utilities can run remotely. So you could check all of your servers in one pass. See for more information.
1.
The default partition offset for Windows Server 2003 is 31.5 KB and 1 MB for Windows Server 2008. Other than the offset being an even number divisible by 8, do you have any advice on what would be a good partition offset? For example, my transaction logs genereate the following (each on dedicated servers):
DiskPart, replacing its predecessor - fdisk, is a command-line utility that provides the ability to manage disks, partitions or volumes in your computer running all versions of the operating system since Windows 2000, also including the latest Windows 10. Users can input DiskPart commands directly to organize hard disk partitions or create a text file script to perform multiple commands. Most disk partition operations that you can perform in Disk Management tool are integrated into DiskPart.
You will need to launch Windows 10/11 DiskPart with Administrator permission. One way is to type "diskpart" in the Search box, and then when diskpart appears in the search results, right-click it and select "Run as administrator". The other way is to press "Windows logo + R" keys and type "diskpart" in the box, and then click "OK".
Before you can use DiskPart commands in Windows 10, you must first list, and then select an object to give it focus. When an object has been focused, any DiskPart commands that you type will act on that object.
At the DISKPART> prompt, type "list disk" to display all the disks in your computer. Each one will have a specific disk number, starting with 0. An asterisk (*) under GPT row means the disk is of GPT partition style. Unless there is only one disk, you will have to tell DiskPart which disk to manage by using "select disk n" command to give it focus. n represents the number of the disk.
At the DISKPART> prompt, type "list volume" to display all the volumes on all disks. Each one will have a specific volume number, starting with 0. To tell DiskPart which volume to manage, you need to type "select volume n" to give it focus. n can be the number of the volume or the drive letter of the volume if has.
The above command means to perform a quick format on the partition. It will be formatted with NTFS file system. To create other file system partition like FAT, FAT32, you just need to replace ntfs with fat or fat32. The label can be any name as you like.
The most common diskpart commands used on the disk should be the MBR and GPT conversion. To delete all partitions or volumes on a disk and convert the disk between MBR and GPT, please refer to the following command:
d3342ee215