Changing an Azure VM Temp Drive to T:

Question

I need to move the Azure VM Temp Disk Drive from D: to another letter (probably T:). Because all of my provisioning setup and configuration are fully automated, I need to do this using a PowerShell script/commands.

Does anyone have a script or the commands necessary to move the temp drive from D: to another letter drive?

From several different queries, it seems like two reboots may be necessary. I did find another post that seems to indicate it's not required.

Because this automation will be used for a long time going forward, I want to do it correctly.

The VMs will be running Windows Server 2019 datacenter.

The new temp disk is already initialized and assigned to the T: drive.

Thank you,
David

Answer 1

Hello, @David Downing !

Changing a drive letter both manually and with a PowerShell script
Thank you for being patient! I tried manually changing the Temporary Storage drive letter but ran into a "Parameter is incorrect" error. This was because I skipped over the prerequisite step of temporarily moving pagefile.sys to C drive like you mentioned. Once I did that, I was able to change the drive letter from D to T successfully both manually and using the PowerShell script:

$Drive = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Volume -Filter "DriveLetter = 'D:'"  
$Drive | Set-CimInstance -Property @{DriveLetter ='T:'}  

One of the simplest approaches to scripting pagefile.sys would be:

wmic computersystem set AutomaticManagedPagefile=False  

Once that has been completed, restart the VM and the script above to change the temp drive letter will run successfully. @David Downing (thank you!) has used the following to move the pagefile.sys to the temp drive:

wmic pagefileset where name="C:\pagefile.sys" delete  
wmic pagefileset create name="T:\pagefile.sys"  
wmic pagefileset where name="T:\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=6144,MaximumSize=6144  

Additional pagefile.sys options:

• https://cloudbuild.co.uk/windows-core-move-page-file-via-powershell/
• https://www.tutorialspoint.com/how-to-change-pagefile-settings-using-powershell
• http://tompaps.blogspot.com/2015/01/move-page-file-remotely-os.html

Answer 2

After running the test, I noticed the pagefile.sys no longer existed on any of the drives. To complete the move I ran the following and rebooted the computer.

wmic computersystem set AutomaticManagedPagefile=False
wmic pagefileset where name="C:\pagefile.sys" delete
wmic pagefileset create name="T:\pagefile.sys"
wmic pagefileset where name="T:\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=6144,MaximumSize=6144