The PowerShell storage module: Initialize, partition, format, check disk usage, and resize disk

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Surender Kumar

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Windows 10 and and Windows 11 has the storage module in PowerShell, which offers various cmdlets related to disk storage management. To see the list of all the cmdlets, you can use Get-Command, as shown below:

Get-Command -Module Storage

Viewing cmdlets from the storage module

You can see that the list is really long. You can use -Verb or -Noun parameters with this command to further trim the list, as shown in the following command:

Get-Command -Module Storage -Noun "*disk*"

Viewing cmdlets from the storage module with disk noun

The Get-Command cmdlet with the -Module Storage and -Noun disk parameters gives us all the cmdlets from the "Storage" module that have "disk" in their "Noun" section. I hope this makes sense in understanding the "Verb–Noun" nomenclature of PowerShell.

Covering all these commands is beyond the scope of this article. Therefore, I will try to cover the commands that an administrator would most often use to perform routine disk management operations.

View disk and partition information with Get-Disk

As discussed previously, the partitioning scheme is very important when it comes to disks. To show the partitioning scheme for all the disks in your system, you can use the following command:

Get-Disk | Format-Table -Auto

Viewing the partitioning scheme with Get Disk

• The command shows information about three disks that are connected to the system.
• The Partition Style column at the end shows the partitioning scheme for all the disks.

The PowerShell Storage module also offers the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet. Let's take a look at the output of this command:

Displaying physical disks with Get Physical Disk

So, what's the difference between the Get-Disk and Get-PhysicalDiskcommands?

The Get-Disk command shows only the logical disks, whereas the Get-PhysicalDisk command returns all the physical disk devices that are attached to the system. The Get-PhysicalDisk command is particularly useful when creating and managing storage spaces. We will not discuss storage spaces in this article. Let's just focus on disk management.

To view the partition information for a disk, use the Get-Partition command, as shown below:

Get-Partition -DiskNumber 0

Viewing the partition information for a disk with Get Partition

• The output of the Get-Disk command shows the disk number in the first column under the "Number" column.
• We used the Get-Partition command with the -DiskNumber parameter to view the partition details for disk 0.
• The output of Get-Partition gave us DriveLetter for the partitions that are available on that disk.

To get information about a particular partition based on its drive letter, you can use the Get-Partition command with the -DriveLetter parameter.

Get-Partition -DriveLetter D

Viewing partition Info using the drive letter

There are numerous commands that you can use to get the information, but I cannot cover them all here. Now that we have enough information about the disks, let's move to the next section.

Initialize the disk with Initialize-Disk

When you attach a new disk to your system for the first time, you need to initialize that disk before you can start using it. Remember the following screen in your disk management tool?

A disk that has not been initialized in Disk Management

To initialize the disk using PowerShell, we can use the Initialize-Disk with the -PartitionStyle parameter, as shown in the following command:

Get-Disk | where PartitionStyle -eq 'raw' | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle GPT 

Take a look at the following image:

Initialize raw disks

• I used the Get-Disk command to list all disks. The Partition Style column tells me that the disk that is not initialized is marked as RAW.
• So, I ran Get-Disk again with a filter to get only "RAW" disks and piped the result to the Initialize-Disk command. The -PartitionStyle GPT parameter initialized the disk as GPT. To initialize the disk as MBR, you could replace GPT with MBR.

Partition the disk with New-Partition

Now that our disk is initialized, we need to create partition(s) before Windows can start using it. To create partitions, we can use the New-Partition cmdlet as shown below:

New-Partition -DiskNumber 3 -Size 20GB -AssignDriveLetter

Creating a new partition with automatic drive letter

• The -DiskNumber parameter is used to specify a particular disk.
• The -Size parameter is used to specify the size of the partition. To use all the unallocated space available on the disk, you could use the -UseMaximumSize parameter.
• The -AssignDriveLetter parameter is used to let Windows choose a drive letter automatically. To specify the particular drive letter of your choice, you could use the -DriveLetter parameter.

To create another partition on the same drive, I will use the following command:

New-Partition -DiskNumber 3 -UseMaximumSize -DriveLetter G

Creating a new partition with manual drive letter

• My disk was 50 GB, and the first partition that I created was 20 GB.
• The -UseMaximumSize parameter for the second partition created a new partition of an approximate size of 30 GB with a manually specified "G" drive letter.

Format the disk with Format-Volume

Before we can start saving our files on the partitions that we just created, they need to be formatted. In the previous section, we assigned the "F" and "G" drive letters to our new partitions. To format the volume, we can use the Format-Volume command, as shown below:

Format-Volume -DriveLetter F -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel "DATA1"

Formating the disk volume

The -DriveLetter parameter is used to specify the partition we are going to format.

• The -FileSystem parameter is used to specify the file system. You can specify the NTFS, ReFS, exFAT, FAT32, and FAT file system types.
• The -NewFileSystemLabel parameter is used to specify the volume label.That is all for initializing, partitioning, and formatting the disk. The best thing about PowerShell is its pipelining ability. We can combine all the commands to initialize, partition, and format the disk into a single command, which will look as shown below:

  Get-Disk | where PartitionStyle -eq 'raw' | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle GPT -PassThru | New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel "MYDATA"
  

• The only new thing you will notice in the above command is the -PassThru parameter, which sends the output of the Initialize-Disk command down the pipeline. The -PassThru parameter is needed because Initialize-Disk does not produce any output by default.
• The command takes all the "RAW" disks, initializes them with the "GPT" scheme, creates a single partition with the -UseMaximumSize parameter, automatically assigns a drive letter, and then formats the volume with the NTFS file system.Take a look at the following image:

Initialize partition and format a disk with a single command

Format USB storage

To format the removable storage disk, use the following command:

Format-Volume -DriveLetter E -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel "USBDATA"

Formating a USB drive

PowerShell also offers a Clear-Disk cmdlet that cleans the disk by removing all partition information and data and uninitializing it. You can use the -Number or the -FriendlyName parameter to specify the disk to clear.

Warning: Please use extra care while using the "Clear-Disk" command on a disk. A little mistake in specifying the correct disk could potentially erase all your important data.

The following command will clear my USB drive, initialize it, create a partition, format it with the NTFS file system, and assign a volume label to it:

Clear-Disk -FriendlyName "SanDisk Cruzer Blade" -RemoveData -RemoveOEM -Confirm:$False -PassThru | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR -PassThru | New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel "USBDATA"

Clear, initialize, partition and format disk

Clear, initialize, partition, and format disk

• The -FriendlyName parameter is used to specify the disk to clean.
• The -RemoveData parameter is used to remove the data from the disk.
• The -RemoveOEM parameter is used to remove the OEM recovery partitions, if any, from the disk.
• The -Confirm:$false parameter is used to disable the confirmation message before clearing the disk.
• The -PassThru parameter sends the output object from one command down the pipeline. This parameter is needed when a command does not produce any output by default, but you still want to pass the output object down the pipeline to the next command.

When you try to run the Clear-Disk cmdlet on a disk that is in the Not Initialized state, you will get an error stating, The disk has not been initialized, as shown in the following screenshot:

Clear Disk The disk has not been initialized

To get around this error, you need to use the Get-Disk command. In this case, you can directly initialize, partition, and format the disk using a single command, as shown below:

Get-Disk | where {$_.FriendlyName -eq 'SanDisk Cruzer Blade'} | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR -PassThru | New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel "USBDATA"

Initialize partition and format the disk

When you use Clear-Disk and then try to use the Set-Disk command to define the partition style, you will get a Not Supported error.

Clear-Disk -FriendlyName 'SanDisk Cruzer Blade' -RemoveData -RemoveOEM -Confirm:$False -PassThru | Set-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR

Set Disk : Not Supported

The Not Supported error occurs because the Clear-Disk command has already cleaned and set the disk in the "Not Initialized" state. To fix this error, you need to use the Initialize-Disk command. You can initialize, partition, and format the disk using a single command, as follows:

Get-Disk | where {$_.FriendlyName -eq 'SanDisk Cruzer Blade'} | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR -PassThru | New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize | Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel "USBDATA"

Initialize partition and format a disk with a single command 1

Get disk usage Information with Get-CimInstance

To display storage usage statistics for all the disks in your system, you can use the following command:

Get-CimInstance Win32_LogicalDisk | Format-Table DeviceId, VolumeName, @{n="TotalSize (GB)";e={[math]::Round($_.Size/1GB,2)}}, @{n="UsedSpace (GB)";e={[math]::Round($_.Size/1GB - $_.FreeSpace/1GB,2)}}, @{n="FreeSpace (GB)";e={[math]::Round($_.FreeSpace/1GB,2)}}

This command shows the DriveLetter, VolumeName, Total Size, Used Space, and Free Space for each partition in the system in a nice tabular format.

Viewing total size used space and free space with Get Disk

Take a look at the UsedSpace column. The F drive shows 8.42 GB storage used.

Resize disk operations with Resize-Partition

In the previous section, we created a single partition of 50 GB on disk 3 and assigned the F drive letter to it.

Viewing total size used space and free space for f drive with Get Disk

In the above image, you can see that the F drive has 8.42 GB space used. So, if you want to resize this partition, you cannot resize it below 8.42 GB.

To resize the partition to 25 GB, use the Resize-Partition command, as shown below:

Resize-Partition -DriveLetter F -Size 25GB

Resizing a partition with Resize Partition

The partition was successfully resized to 25 GB.

If you try to set the value of the -Size parameter to lower than the used space, you will get the Size Not Supported error.

Resize Partition Size not supported

To fix this error, you need to set the value of the -Size parameter to a higher value than the space used.

Similarly, if you try to set the value of the -Size parameter to something higher than the Total Size, you will get the Not enough available capacity error.

Resize Partition Not enough available capacity

To get around this error, you need to set the value of the -Size parameter to a lower value than the "Total Size".

Now, suppose you want to resize the partition to its maximum capacity. Unfortunately, no parameter is available with the Resize-Partition cmdlet to support this operation. But there is always a way. The storage module offers a Get-PartitionSupportedSize cmdlet that returns two values: SizeMin and SizeMax.

Displaying SizeMin and SizeMax with Get PartitionSupportedSize

We can use this command, along with Resize-Partition, to obtain the desired result. Let's take a look at the following commands:

$supportedSize = (Get-PartitionSupportedSize -DriveLetter F)
Resize-Partition -DriveLetter F -Size $supportedSize.SizeMax

After running the above commands, the partition is resized to its maximum supported capacity. To view the disk usage statistics again, use the following command:

Get-CimInstance Win32_LogicalDisk | Format-Table DeviceId, VolumeName, @{n="TotalSize (GB)";e={[math]::Round($_.Size/1GB,2)}}, @{n="UsedSpace (GB)";e={[math]::Round($_.Size/1GB - $_.FreeSpace/1GB,2)}}, @{n="FreeSpace (GB)";e={[math]::Round($_.FreeSpace/1GB,2)}}

Resizing a partition to the maximum supported size with Resize Partition

In my next post in this series about Windows PowerShell disk management, I will explain how you can modify partition information with PowerShell.