How to mount new partition/volume as a folder in Windows?

If you open ‘Server manager’ after logging into Windows 2008 server and under ‘Storage’ section once we click on ‘Disk Management’ on right side we can see all the drives of the machine and below to that we can see all the disks available. Once a new partition is added or any unallocated partition already exists in machine we can find it if we scroll down. If unallocated partition exists it shows like below capture:

In my case I have 2 disks Disk 15 and 16 which have 100GB and 400GB of space which are currently un-allotted to any of the folder or drive. My requirement is to allot this 400GB of space to the AdventureWorks folder which is located at C:\SQL2K8\AdventureWorks).

To achieve this right click on the 400GB new volume in ‘server manager’ and select ‘New Simple Volume’ as shown in below capture:

Once you click on this it will open simple volume wizard, in the window check on the button ‘Mount in the follow empty NTFS folder’ and click on ‘Browse’ button, this open the drive and folders available in machine and in it browse to the folder for which you want to allot space, in my case I need to open C drive and SQL2K8 folder and select ‘AdventureWorks’ folder after that click on ‘OK’.

In ‘Format Partition’ window check the ‘Format this volume with …’ option and select ‘File System’ as ‘NTFS’ and ‘Allocation Unit Size’ as ‘64k’ and ‘Volume Label’ can be left unattended and check the ‘Perform a quick format’ option.

Note: The options to be selected in this windows may change based on your server settings and standards.

Then proceed clicking next and it will be done. To verify whether it has been allocated properly or not go to folder right click click ‘Properties’ and click on ‘Properties’ and then you can see the folder has free space of 400GB (as per my case here).

Thanks!!

#mountingdrive