Diskpart In WinPE

[gadget]

Sorry if I am in the wrong place...

I am using PE2005 as a primary deployment tool for our puters over here. Most options are fine and covered. Came across a scenario today that has stumped me.

I want to split a hard disk into 2 seperate primary partitions. The second partition needs to be 4096mb in size and reside at the end of the disk. The disks are of different sizes so I need to create the partition at the end of the drive first.

Previously we used gdisk in dos but the 32 bit version does not create new partitions.

As I said, this would be nice to follow our processes and run through winpe, I know about diskpart but I cannot find a way of creating the second partition first unless I work out the exact offset to start the partition from....

ANy help would be appreciated...

[gadget]

Didnt take long.

Run a script to locate the size of the hdd in mb, took away 4096 and put in a dos variable %offsetsize% and run the diskpart command

create partition primary size=4096 offset=%offsetsize%

then created the first partition....

[hazard_abio]

Didnt take long.

Run a script to locate the size of the hdd in mb, took away 4096 and put in a dos variable %offsetsize% and run the diskpart command

create partition primary size=4096 offset=%offsetsize%

then created the first partition....

sorry to be a pest, but, could we view this script you used to find the size of the hdd?

[mats]

this is one way

Const HARD_DISK = 3

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _

& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colDisks = objWMIService.ExecQuery _

("Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk Where DriveType = " & HARD_DISK & "")

For Each objDisk in colDisks

msgbox "DeviceID: " & objDisk.DeviceID

msgbox "Disk Size: " & objDisk.size/1024/1024

Next

[Turge]

Exactly the way we do it here.

Diskpart.txt would look like this:

select disk=0
clean
create partition primary size=<main>
assign letter=c
create partition primary size=<data>
select volume 0
select disk = 0
select partition 2
assign letter=d
remove noerr
select partition 1
active

Sizepart.vbs

Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 3 
Const TristateUseDefault = -2, TristateTrue = -1, TristateFalse = 0 
Const OPEN_FILE_FOR_APPENDING = 8 
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.fileSystemObject") 
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_DiskDrive",,48)

For Each objItem in colItems
	HD = int(objItem.Size/1000000000)
	DATA = 4
	MAIN = HD - DATA
	DATA = ActualSize(DATA*1000)
	MAIN = ActualSize(MAIN*1000)
	Exit For
next

	Set f = fso.GetFile("z:\diskpart.txt") 
	Set ts = f.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading, Tristatefalse) 
	t = ts.ReadAll 
	ts.Close 
	t = replace(t, "<main>", MAIN, 1, -1, 1)
	t = replace(t, "<data>", DATA, 1, -1, 1)
	Set objOutputFile = fso.OpenTextFile("z:\diskpart.txt", ForWriting) 
	objOutputFile.Write t
	objOutputFile.Close 


Function ActualSize(Size)
	ActualSize=int(Size/1.024)
End Function

Function TheoreticalSize(Size)
	TheoreticalSize = int(Size*1.024)
End Function

STARTNET.CMD would then contain:

copy x:\files\diskpart.txt z: > nul
cscript x:\files\sizepart.vbs
diskpart /s z:\diskpart.txt > nul
format c: /FS:NTFS /V:MAIN /q /y > nul
format d: /FS:NTFS /V:DATA /q /y > nul

You'll have to forgive my code.. I modified it for your scenario. Our situation is a little more complicated since depending on the size of the HD, our 3rd partition can either be 2GB or 40% of the drive.

[hazard_abio]

Thank you both for posting. very helpful on both fronts.

[xponard]

Hi there!

I have exactly the same need,

My question is: what is the z:\ drive, how can i create/access it.

(the x:\ drive means the CD device / PE source location)

Thanks in advance.

[ChrisBaksa]

In most cases... Z: is the writeable Ram Disk. since the PE ISO is read only... Most people create a Z: drive for temp write space. It is not there by default. It must be added to your build.

Chris

[mats]

And the info on how you do that is on this forum. Search for ramdrive and you will score hits

[xponard]

ok, i finally found how to add a writable RAMdisk (and get my own little Z: drive)

(customized my PE : adding WMI support + script support + RAM disk support)

i am trying to use the vbs script above but i am stuck on the fifth line (GetObject)

> sizepart.vbs(5, 1) Microsoft VBScript runtime error: The remote server machine does not exist or is unavailable: 'GetObject'

What i have missed...?

Forget it I have completely restart the RAMdisk integration with the Johan Arwidmark procedure and now it is ok (with Christiaan Ghijselinck's RAMdisk files)

Edited December 12, 2005 by xponard