Format Drive. Remotely

Format drive – the Lazy way

Another day, another quicky. A few new VMs running with additional drives that someone forgot to initialize? Considering RDPing to each of those? Or maybe mmc console (DiskMGMT.MSC) and initializing one by one? What about Honolulu?

No worries, PowerShell will do just fine. I love those quickies that can save you a few clicks here and there!

The RAW meat

So, basically formatting a drive requires these four steps:

1. have a disk with raw partition (uninitialized)
2. initializing the drive
3. creating new partition, and assigning a letter to it
4. finally – formatting the drive

So:

	$driveLetter = (get-disk | Where-Object {$_.PartitionStyle -eq 'RAW'} | Initialize-Disk –PartitionStyle GPT –PassThru | New-Partition –AssignDriveLetter –UseMaximumSize ).DriveLetter
	Format-Volume –NewFileSystemLabel 'DATA' –FileSystem 'ReFS' –DriveLetter $driveLetter –Force –confirm:$false

view raw

RAW_FormatDrive.ps1

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Let’s make it usable

Now, if you’re like me and would like to be able to connect to remote machines with different credentials (LAPS!) and format drives with different labels and file systems – there’s a function for you here:

	function Format-RemoteDrive {
	<#
	.SYNOPSIS
	Formats all RAW drives on a remote system.
	.DESCRIPTION
	Using Invoke-Command will connect to remote system (ComputerName) and will format all RAW drives with given properties
	.PARAMETER ComputerName
	Name of a remote system to connect to using Invoke-Command.
	.PARAMETER NewFileSystemLabel
	Drive label (i.e. "MyData") for all drives to be formatted.
	.PARAMETER FileSystem
	FileSystem to be choosen for drives (ReFS and NTFS available)
	.PARAMETER Credential
	Alternate credentials to use to connect to ComputerName
	.EXAMPLE
	Format-RemoteDrive -ComputerName SomeServer -NewFileSystemLabel DATA -FileSystem ReFS -Credential (Get-Credential)
	Will connect to SomeServer using given credentials and will format all RAW drives to ReFS with DATA label
	#>
	[CmdletBinding()]
	[OutputType([void])]
	Param(
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,
	ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
	[string]
	$ComputerName,
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
	ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
	[string]
	$NewFileSystemLabel,
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
	ValueFromPipeline=$True, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
	[ValidateSet('NTFS','ReFS')]
	[string]
	$FileSystem,
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
	ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
	[System.Management.Automation.CredentialAttribute()]
	$Credential
	)
	Process{
	Write-Verbose –Message "Processing computer {$ComputerName}"
	$ConnectProps = @{
	ComputerName = $ComputerName
	}
	if($PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey('Credential')) {
	Write-Verbose –Message "Credential {$($Credential.UserName)} will be used to connect to computer {$ComputerName}"
	$ConnectProps.Credential = $Credential
	}
	Write-Verbose –Message "Creating PSSession to computer {$ComputerName}"
	$pssession = New-PSSession @ConnectProps
	Write-Verbose –Message "Checking if there are any not initialized disks on {$ComputerName}"
	$rawDisks = Invoke-Command –Session $pssession –ScriptBlock {
	get-disk | Where-Object {$_.PartitionStyle -eq 'RAW'}
	}
	if($rawDisks) {
	if($rawDisks.count){
	Write-Verbose –Message "Found #{$($rawDisks.Count)} raw disks on {$ComputerName}"
	}
	else {
	Write-Verbose –Message "Found #{1} raw disk on {$ComputerName}"
	}
	Write-Verbose –Message "Processing disks on {$ComputerName}"
	Invoke-Command –Session $pssession –ScriptBlock {
	$driveLetter = (get-disk | Where-Object {$_.PartitionStyle -eq 'RAW'} | Initialize-Disk –PartitionStyle GPT –PassThru | New-Partition –AssignDriveLetter –UseMaximumSize ).DriveLetter
	$result = Format-Volume –NewFileSystemLabel $USING:NewFileSystemLabel –FileSystem $USING:FileSystem –DriveLetter $driveLetter –Force –confirm:$false
	$result
	}
	}
	Write-Verbose –Message "Removing PSSession to Computer {$($pssession.ComputerName)}"
	$pssession | Remove-PSSession
	}
	}

view raw

Format-Drive.ps1

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Or You can grab it as part of PPoSh (Polish PowerShell User Group) Module from GitHub or PowerShell Gallery. There’s more goodies in there.

If you’ve installed it before (Install-Module PPoShTools), just update it (Update-Module PPoShTools).

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