Managing Windows Server 2012 Storage and File Systems : Storage Management (part 7) - Configuring storage - Creating and managing virtual hard disks for Hyper-V, Converting FAT or FAT32 to NTFS, Worki

You can use Disk Management to create, attach, and detach virtual hard disks. To create a virtual hard disk, choose Create VHD from the Action menu. In the Create And Attach Virtual Hard Disk dialog box, shown in Figure 14, tap or click Browse. Use the Browse Virtual Disk Files dialog box to select the location where you want to create the .vhd file for the virtual hard disk. Next type a name for the virtual hard disk, and then tap or click Save.

In the Virtual Hard Disk Size list, enter the size of the disk in MB, GB, or TB. Keep in mind disk sizes aren’t necessarily fixed.

Next, chose a virtual hard disk format. Two virtual hard disk formats are available:

Use the Virtual Hard Disk Type options to specify whether the size of the VHD dynamically expands to its fixed maximum size as data is saved to it or uses a fixed amount of space regardless of the amount of data stored on it. When you tap or click OK, Disk Management creates the virtual hard disk.

The VHD is attached automatically and added as a new disk. To initialize the disk for use, press and hold or right-click the disk entry in Graphical View and then tap or click Initialize Disk. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, shown in Figure 15, the disk is selected for initialization. Specify the disk type as MBR or GPT, and then tap or click OK.

After initializing the disk, press and hold or right-click the unpartitioned space on the disk and create a volume of the appropriate type. After you create the volume, the VHD is available for use.

After you create, attach, initialize, and format a VHD, you can work with a virtual disk in much the same way as you work with other disks. You can write data to and read data from a VHD. You can boot the computer from a VHD. You are able to take a VHD offline or put a VHD online by pressing and holding or right-clicking the disk entry in Graphical View and selecting Offline or Online, respectively. If you no longer want to use a VHD, you can detach it by pressing and holding or right-clicking the disk entry in Graphical View, selecting Detach VHD, and then tapping or clicking OK in the Detach Virtual Hard Disk dialog box.

You can use VHDs created with other programs as well. If you created a VHD using another program or have a detached VHD you want to attach, you can work with the VHD by completing the following steps:

On both MBR and GPT disks, you can convert FAT or FAT32 partitions, logical drives, and volumes to NTFS by using the Convert command. This preserves the file and directory structure without the need to reformat. Before you use Convert, you should check to see whether the volume is being used as the active boot volume or is a system volume containing the operating system. If it is a system volume, Convert must have exclusive access to the volume before it can begin the conversion. Because exclusive access to boot or system volumes can be obtained only during startup, you will see a prompt asking if you want to schedule the drive to be converted the next time the system starts.

As part of the preparation for conversion, you should check to see if there’s enough free space to perform the conversion. You’ll need a block of free space that’s about 25 percent of the total space used by the volume. For example, if the volume stores 12 GBs of data, you should have about 3 GBs of free space. Convert checks for this free space before running, and if there isn’t enough, it won’t convert the volume.

You run Convert at the command line. Its syntax is as follows:

convert volume /FS:NTFS

Here, volume is the drive letter followed by a colon, drive path, or volume name. So, for instance, if you want to convert the E drive to NTFS, type convert e: /fs:ntfs. This starts Convert. As shown in the following example, Convert checks the current file-system type and then prompts you to enter the volume label for the drive:

The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive E:

As long as you enter the correct volume label, Convert will continue as shown in the following example:

Volume CORPDATA created 4/10/2014 12:53 PM
Volume Serial Number is AA6B-CEDE
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
   91,827,680 KB total disk space.
   91,827,672 KB are available.

   8,192 bytes in each allocation unit.
   11,478,460 total allocation units on disk.
   11,478,459 allocation units available on disk.

Determining disk space required for file system conversion...
Total disk space:            91927860 KB
Free space on volume:        91929680 KB
Space required for conversion:      12080460 KB
Converting file system
Conversion complete

Here, Convert examines the file and folder structure and then determines how much disk space is needed for the conversion. If there is enough free space, Convert performs the conversion. Otherwise, it exits with an error, stating there isn’t enough free space to complete the conversion.

Several additional parameters are available as well, including /v, which tells Convert to display detailed information during the conversion, and /x, which tells Convert to force the partition or volume to dismount before the conversion if necessary. You can’t dismount a boot or system drive—these drives can be converted only when the system is restarted.

On converted boot and system volumes, Convert applies the same default security as that applied during Windows setup. On other volumes, Convert sets security so that the Users group has access but doesn’t give access to the special group Everyone. If you don’t want security to be set, you can use the /Nosecurity parameter. This parameter tells Convert to remove all security attributes and make all files and directories on the disk accessible to the group Everyone. In addition, you can use the /Cvtarea parameter to set the name of a contiguous file in the root directory to be a placeholder for NTFS system files.