Disks and Partitions Management with PowerShell on Windows

This post will cover how to manage disks, partitions, and volumes using the PowerShell command line. All disk and partition management tasks that are typically performed using the Disk Management GUI (diskmgmt.msc) or the DiskPart.exe command-line tool can also be executed from PowerShell. We’ll explain how to retrieve information about connected physical disks, initialize a disk, create a partition table, create a new partition, format it, and assign a drive letter.

The built-in Storage module (available starting with PowerShell 3.0 and newer) contains over 170 cmdlets for managing disks and partitions.

Get-Command -Module Storage

PowerShell: List Local Disks and Partitions

First, let’s list the available local disks on a computer at the logical level.

Get-Disk | ft -AutoSize

To select only the system drive on which Windows is installed, run the following command:

Get-Disk | Where-Object IsSystem -eq $True | fl

This command displays all attributes of the system disk. These attributes can be used to select disks based on different criteria.

UniqueId : SCSI\DISK&VEN_VMWARE&PROD_VIRTUAL_DISK\5&1EC51BF7&0&000000:DESKTOP-JOPF9
Number : 0
Path : \\?\scsi#disk&ven_vmware&prod_virtual_disk#5&1ec42ba7&0&000000#{21f23456-a6bf-12d0-94f2-001efb8b}
Manufacturer : VMware
Model : Virtual disk
SerialNumber :
Size : 98 GB
AllocatedSize : 98432321434
LogicalSectorSize : 512
PhysicalSectorSize : 512
NumberOfPartitions : 2
PartitionStyle : MBR
IsReadOnly : False
IsSystem : True
IsBoot : True

Print the disk name, serial number, model, and firmware version:

Get-Disk | Select-Object -Property FriendlyName, SerialNumber,Model,FirmwareVersion

Filter only by disks with an Offline status.

Get-Disk | Where-Object IsOffline –Eq $True| ft –AutoSize

Use the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet to view the characteristics and status of local physical disks on a computer.

With PowerShell, you can detect whether a drive is an SSD or HDD, or if it is a USB flash drive (Unspecified media type).

DeviceId Model                      MediaType   BusType         Size

——— ——                      ———   ——-         —-

0        TOSHIBA MK3775VSXP         HDD         SATA    500156374016

1        Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series SSD         SATA    128060514304

2        Transcend                 UnSpecified USB     128169757184

For example, to display all connected USB drives:

Get-Disk | Where-Object -Property BusType -eq USB

The disk health can be checked from PowerShell by looking at the HealthStatus attribute, as well as the SMART values of the disk.

Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select-Object DeviceId, Temperature, PowerOnHours, LoadUnloadCycleCount, ReadErrorsTotal, WriteErrorsTotal | Format-Table -AutoSize

If you need to put the disk into read-only mode (this only applies to the current computer):

Set-Disk 2 -IsReadOnly 1

Disable read-only mode:

Set-Disk 2 -IsReadOnly 0

List the partitions on all the disks in a computer.

Get-Partition

Or get partitions on the specified disks only:

Get-Partition –DiskNumber 1,2

List all logical volumes on a Windows computer:

Get-Volume

Disk Initialization in PowerShell

In the previous example, one of the computer’s disks was Offline and had a RAW partition table (in the Partition Style column). This is a new, clean disk that has just been connected to the computer. Let’s try to initialize it, create a GPT or MBR partition table, and create a new partition on it.

In order for the new disk to be available to the operating system, it must first be brought Online.

Get-Disk | Where-Object IsOffline –Eq $True | Set-Disk –IsOffline $False

Now you can initialize this disk (its index is 1):

Initialize-Disk -Number 1

The disk is formatted with a GPT (GUID) partition table by default. If you want to change the partition table type to MBR, run the following command:

Set-Disk 2 -PartitionStyle MBR

To avoid specifying the disk number, you can initialize all connected disks with the RAW partition table:

Get-Disk | Where-Object PartitionStyle –Eq 'RAW' | Initialize-Disk

How to Create Partitions on a Disk Using PowerShell

The New-Partition cmdlet is used to create a new partition on a disk. Let’s create a 10 GB partition and assign the letter L: to it:

New-Partition –DiskNumber 1 -Size 10gb -DriveLetter L

If you want the partition to occupy all available disk space, use the UseMaximumSize attribute. To automatically assign a drive letter, use the AssignDriveLetter option (sometimes Windows doesn’t assign a drive letter automatically).

New-Partition –DiskNumber 1 -AssignDriveLetter –UseMaximumSize

To change the drive letter assigned to a partition, use the command:

Set-Partition –DriveLetter L -NewDriveLetter U

If there is any unused space, an existing partition on the disk can be extended using it. First, check the maximum available partition size (SizeMax). Then, increase the partition size to its maximum using unallocated space.

$MaxSize = (Get-PartitionSupportedSize -DriveLetter L).SizeMax
Resize-Partition -DriveLetter L -Size $MaxSize

This command is used to make a specific partition active.

Set-Partition -DriveLetter U -IsActive $true

Display information about the used and free space on the logical volumes.

Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_LogicalDisk |
Select-Object -Property DeviceID, VolumeName, @{Label='FreeSpace (Gb)'; expression={($_.FreeSpace/1GB).ToString('F2')}},
@{Label='Total (Gb)'; expression={($_.Size/1GB).ToString('F2')}},
@{label='FreePercent'; expression={[Math]::Round(($_.freespace / $_.size) * 100, 2)}}|ft

If you need to set a specific partition to ReadOnly mode:

Set-Partition -DiskNumber 2 -PartitionNumber 2 -IsReadOnly 1

Format-Volume

Let’s format a new partition in the NTFS file system and assign it the DBData volume label:

Format-Volume -DriveLetter L -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel DBData -Confirm:$false

Removing Partitions from a Disk with PowerShell

To remove all partitions on disks 1 and 2 without confirmation, run this command:

Get-Partition –DiskNumber 1,2 | Remove-Partition -Confirm:$false

To delete all partitions on Disk1 and completely erase data, use:

Clear-Disk -Number 1 -RemoveData -Confirm:$false

If there are OEM partitions on a disk (OEM recovery partition, EFI partition, System Reserved), use the RemoveOEM parameter to delete them:

Clear-Disk -Number 1 -RemoveData –RemoveOEM

Use the following PowerShell command to initialize any new RAW disks connected to the computer and create an NTFS partition with the maximum available size. It is convenient to use when connecting a new, empty disk (whether physical or virtual).

Get-Disk |Where-Object PartitionStyle -eq 'RAW' |Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR -PassThru |New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize |Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -Confirm:$false