How to use Microsoft DiskPart to display disk information in the Recovery Environment for System Recovery

Problem

If the System Recovery Disk does not display disks, volumes, partitions or other drive information, DISKPART can be used to determine if WinPE sees the volume. 

Error Message

 If diskpart does not see the disk information, it is possible the drivers for the disk controller need to be loaded. Please refer to the user's guide for instructions on how to do this. If diskpart does show the disks, but the recovery environment doesn't, there may be partition errors, the disk is not a valid target for restore, etc. 

Solution

The Microsoft DiskPart Utility provides a quick way to determine drive number designations when booted into WinPE. Once booted into the System Recovery Disk, click ANALYZE, open a command prompt. As the command prompt, type DISKPART. Below are a few of the more common commands used to determine disk information:

LIST DISK -   Displays a list of disks and information about them, such as their size, amount of available free space, whether the disk is a basic or dynamic disk, and whether the disk uses the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style. The disk marked with an asterisk (*) has focus.

DETAIL DISK -     Displays the properties of the selected disk and the volumes on that disk.

LIST PARTITION -  Displays the partitions listed in the partition table of the current disk. On dynamic disks, these partitions may not correspond to the dynamic volumes on the disk. This discrepancy occurs because dynamic disks contain entries in the partition table for the system volume or boot volume (if present on the disk). Dynamic disks also contain a partition that occupies the remainder of the disk and reserves space for use by dynamic volumes.

DETAIL PARTITION -  Displays the properties of the selected partition.

LIST VOLUME -  Displays a list of basic and dynamic volumes on all disks.

DETAIL VOLUME - Displays the disks on which the current volume resides.

EXIT -  Exits the DiskPart command interpreter.

More information about additional Microsoft DiskPart commands can be found at the following Microsoft web page:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465.aspx

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References
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465.aspx