Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Creating volumes

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, 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:

1. Launch the New Volume Wizard-for example, by right-clicking on the Archive Disk item.
2. 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.
3. Specify the size of the new volume you are creating. The maximum size you can select here is the size of the virtual disk you selected in the previous step.
4. 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:).
5. Select the file system (NTFS or ReFS) for the new volume.
6. Either leave the allocation unit size for the file system as Default or select one of the available values.
7. Specify a descriptive volume name for the new volume.
8. 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.
9. 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
-----------  ---------------  ----------  ---------  ------------
	     System Reserved  NTFS 	  Fixed      Healthy
C 	     		      NTFS        Fixed      Healthy
D 					  CD-ROM     Healthy

SizeRemaining  Size
-------------  ----
108.69 MB      350 MB
219.48 GB      232.49 GB
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
-----------  ---------------  ----------  ---------  ------------
E 			      NTFS 	  Fixed      Healthy

SizeRemaining  Size
-------------  ----
2 TB           2 TB