diskpart – What is diskpart?

Diskpart is a built-in Windows utility. This is a command tool that has been used as Command Prompt to manage drives, partitions, and volumes. Where other tools like Disk Management and Format won’t work to fix the problem. Diskpart can be used to solve these problems. The diskpart command interpreter helps you manage your computer’s drives in command prompt.

Before you can use diskpart commands, you must first list, and then select an object to give command. After an task identified, any diskpart commands that you type will act on that object.

List available objects
You can list the available objects and determine an object’s number or drive letter by using:

list disk – Displays all the disks on the computer.
list volume – Displays all the volumes on the computer.
list partition – Displays the partitions on the disk that has focus on the computer.
list vdisk – Displays all the virtual disks on the computer.

Determine focus
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.
Some commands automatically change the focus. For example, when you create a new partition, the focus automatically switches to the new partition.

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 is lost.

To start the diskpart command interpreter, at the command prompt type:
diskpart
You must be in your local Administrators group, or a group with similar permissions, to run diskpart.

You can run the following commands from the Diskpart command interpreter:

PARAMETERS	Command Description
active	Marks the disk’s partition with focus, as active.
add	Mirrors the simple volume with focus to the specified disk.
assign	Assigns a drive letter or mount point to the volume with focus.
attributes	Displays, sets, or clears the attributes of a disk or volume.
automount	Enables or disables the automount feature.
break	Breaks the mirrored volume with focus into two simple volumes.
clean	Removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus.
compact vdisk	Reduces the physical size of a dynamically expanding virtual hard disk (VHD) file.
convert	Converts file allocation table (FAT) and FAT32 volumes to the NTFS file system, leaving existing files and
create	Creates a partition on a disk, a volume on one or more disks, or a virtual hard disk (VHD).
delete	Deletes a partition or a volume.
detach vdisk	Stops the selected virtual hard disk (VHD) from appearing as a local hard disk drive on the host computer.
detail	Displays information about the selected disk, partition, volume, or virtual hard disk (VHD).
exit	Exits the diskpart command interpreter.
expand vdisk	Expands a virtual hard disk (VHD) to the size that you specify.
extend	Extends the volume or partition with focus, along with its file system, into free (unallocated) space on a disk.
filesystems	Displays information about the current file system of the volume with focus and lists the file systems that are supported for formatting the volume.
format	Formats a disk to accept Windows files.
gpt	Assigns the gpt attribute(s) to the partition with focus on basic GUID partition table (gpt) disks.
help	Displays a list of the available commands or detailed help information on a specified command.
import	Imports a foreign disk group into the disk group of the local computer.
inactive	Marks the system partition or boot partition with focus as inactive on basic master boot record (MBR) disks.
list	Displays a list of disks, of partitions in a disk, of volumes in a disk, or of virtual hard disks (VHDs).
merge vdisk	Merges a differencing virtual hard disk (VHD) with its corresponding parent VHD.
offline	Takes an online disk or volume to the offline state.
online	Takes an offline disk or volume to the online state.
recover	Refreshes the state of all disks in a disk group, attempt to recover disks in an invalid disk group, and resynchronizes mirrored volumes and RAID-5 volumes that have stale data.
rem	Provides a way to add comments to a script.
remove	Removes a drive letter or mount point from a volume.
repair	Repairs the RAID-5 volume with focus by replacing the failed disk region with the specified dynamic disk.
rescan	Locates new disks that may have been added to the computer.
retain	Prepares an existing dynamic simple volume to be used as a boot or system volume.
san	Displays or sets the storage area network (san) policy for the operating system.
select	Shifts the focus to a disk, partition, volume, or virtual hard disk (VHD).
set id	Changes the partition type field for the partition with focus.
shrink	Reduces the size of the selected volume by the amount you specify.
uniqueid	Displays or sets the GUID partition table (GPT) identifier or master boot record (MBR) signature for the disk with focus.