Before you can create a new volume, you must create at least
one virtual disk from a storage pool on your file server. Continuing
the procedure from the previous section, Figure 6 shows that
file server HOST7 now has a virtual disk named Archive Disk that has
a capacity of 2 TBs but no volumes on it yet.
To create a new volume from a virtual disk using Server
Manager, perform the following steps:
-
Launch the New Volume Wizard—for example, by
right-clicking on the Archive Disk item shown as selected in
Figure 6.
-
Select the virtual disk from which you want to create your
new volume and the server to which you want to provision the
volume. In this example, you are using Archive Disk to provision
a new volume to HOST7.
-
Specify the size of the new volume you are creating as
shown in Figure 7. The maximum
size you can select here is the size of the virtual disk you
selected in the previous step.
-
Assign the new volume a drive letter, a folder, or
neither. If you assign a folder (for example, C:\Data), the
volume will appear in the file system as a folder (Data) within
a drive (C:).
-
Select the file system (NTFS or ReFS) for the new
volume.
-
Either leave the allocation unit size for the file system
as Default or select one of the available values.
-
Specify a descriptive volume name for the new
volume.
-
Specify whether to generate short (8.3) file names for the
new volume. Short file names are usually needed only to support
legacy applications, such as 16-bit programs. Generating short
file names is not recommended because it will make file
operations slower.
-
Complete the remaining steps of the wizard to create the
new volume.
Alternatively, you could use Windows PowerShell to create the
same volume. Begin by using the Get-Volume cmdlet to display a list
of volumes on the file server:
PS C:\> Get-Volume
DriveLetter FileSystemLabel FileSystem DriveType HealthStatus SizeRemaining Size
----------- --------------- ---------- --------- ------------ ------------- ----
System Reserved NTFS Fixed Healthy 108.69 MB 350 MB
C NTFS Fixed Healthy 219.48 GB 232.49 GB
D CD-ROM Healthy 0 B 0 B
To create a new volume on your virtual disk, which you saw in
the previous section is disk number 4 on the server, you use the
New-Partition cmdlet as follows:
PS C:\> New-Partition -DiskNumber 4 -UseMaximumSize -AssignDriveLetter
Disk Number: 4
PartitionNumber DriveLetter Offset Size Type
--------------- ----------- ------ ---- ----
2 E 135266304 2 TB Basic
Once you create the new volume, you can use the Format-Volume
cmdlet to format it as follows:
PS C:\> Format-Volume -DriveLetter E -FileSystem NTFS
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
DriveLetter FileSystemLabel FileSystem DriveType HealthStatus SizeRemaining Size
----------- --------------- ---------- --------- ------------ ------------- ----
E NTFS Fixed Healthy 2 TB 2 TB
