diskpart assign mount fails

[ngraf]

I'm using WinPE 2004 but the same thing happens in at least one older version.

I cannot assign an access path (mount point) to a newly created partition with diskpart.

I try the following:

select disk 5
create partition primary size=2000
select volume 6
assign mount=K:\mnt

And get this error message:

DiskPart could not assign the drive letter or mount point.
Make sure the drive letter or mount point is valid.

Assigning a drive letter to the partition works:

select volume 6
assign letter=G

Mounting an existing partition at the same point works:

select volume 5
assign mount=K:\mnt

If I reboot WinPe, the previously failed command now succeeds:

select volume 6
assign mount=K:\mnt

It seems that some discovery task occurs at boot that does not occur when the partition is created.

Has anybody else seen this?

Does anybody know how to fix it without a reboot?

Thanks!

[staples]

Open a case with microsoft... there are issues with diskpart where not all the time after you create the partition you fail on assigning the drive letter.

It seems that creating and assigning in the same file fails (at least for me) 25% - 50% of the time.

Hotfix is almost fully regression tested.

[ngraf]

Thanks for the response. I'm in the process of contacting MS but was hoping this forum would be faster.

I've seen the posts about drive letter assignments failing from scripts. But in my case, drive letter assignments work just fine. Also, this happens when entering the commands interactively and waiting for several minutes (sometimes hours) between creating the partition and attempting to mount it.

[staples]

Same issue.

As soon as I get the result (kb article) I will probably post it.... it should be public with everyone experiencing the same issue.

[getwired]

You shouldn't ever have to reboot just to pick up a new partition - have you run rescan from diskpart after creating your new partition(s)?

Edited November 1, 2005 by getwired

[ChrisBaksa]

This is due to how the OS discovers the Volume.

Ever put a cd in XP and it never displays teh contents?

You must actually "Kick" the OS awake and force it to discover the new volume. I do this by using a tool we wrote in house that Queries the drive partitions and writes out the Boot Record to to a file in the ram drive. This causes the OS to go thru it's motions which will discover the new voume. It has been Very reliable.

Before that... It was a crap shoot.

Chris

[ngraf]

I have tried to rescan the disks but it didn't help.

I'm also trying to avoid doing anything to "Kick the OS awake" because I've done things like that plenty of times in the past and the OS always picks the worst moment to refuse to wake up.

I think I'll wait for the hotfix.

[staples]

Hotfix is out to Fix Diskpart issues. It is actually the disk subsystem dlls.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=910380

Have to contact support for the fix though.