Diskpart Command

Use the 'diskpart' command to manage hard drive partitions

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Tim Fisher
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Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University
Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.
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Updated on March 13, 2023

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The diskpart Command Prompt command is used to create or delete partitions on hard drives.

Diskpart Command Availability

The diskpart command is available from within the Command Prompt in Windows operating systems, including Windows 11, 10, 8, etc.

You can also access this command from the Recovery Console in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Managing partitions is also possible without the use of a command from within any version of Windows using the Disk Management tool, or free disk partition software.

Diskpart Command Syntax

diskpart <parameter>

The availability of certain diskpart command switches and other syntax may differ from operating system to operating system. See How to Read Command Syntax if you're not sure how to read the syntax as it's described in this table.

Diskpart Command Parameters
Item Description
active Marks the disk's partition with focus, as active.
add Creates a new partition on the specified hard drive.
assign Assigns a drive letter or mount point to the volume with focus.
attach vdisk Attaches (sometimes called mounts or surfaces) a virtual hard disk (VHD) so that it appears on the host computer as a local hard disk drive.
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 directories intact.
create Creates a partition on a disk, a volume on one or more disks, or a virtual hard disk (VHD).
delete Removes a specified partition on a specified hard drive.
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.

Diskpart Command Examples

Here are some examples showing how the diskpart command can be used:

Create 5 GB Partition 

diskpart /add \Device\HardDisk0 5000

In the above example, the diskpart command creates a 5,000 MB partition on the hard drive located at \Device\HardDisk0.

Delete Partition by Name 

diskpart /delete \Device\HardDisk0\Partition1

For this one, the diskpart command will remove the Partition1 partition located on the hard drive \Device\HardDisk0.

Delete Partition by Letter 

diskpart /delete G:

This command will remove the partition currently assigned the drive letter G.

Select a Disk 

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
attributes disk clear readonly
exit

Finally, in this multipart command, diskpart is being used to select a particular disk, disk 1 in this example, so we can remove the readonly attribute that's been set on it.

Related Commands

The fixboot, fixmbr, and bootcfg commands are often used with the diskpart command.

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