Note: This feature is only available when using managed disks.

Data disks provide additional storage capacity for Azure virtual machines and multiple data disks can be attached to a single VM. Before they can be used, newly added data disks must be initialized and formatted. The examples below demonstrate how to initialize and format the first data disk attached to the VM.

1. On Ubuntu:

   for disk in $(lsblk -d -n -o NAME,TYPE | awk '$2 == "disk" {print $1}'); do
     # Determine partition suffix: 'p1' for NVMe, '1' for others
     case "$disk" in
       nvme*) part="${disk}p1" ;;
       *)     part="${disk}1" ;;
     esac
   
     # Skip disks that already have a filesystem/partition
     if ! blkid "/dev/$disk" >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
        ! blkid "/dev/$part" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
   
       parted /dev/$disk --script mklabel gpt mkpart xfspart ext4 0% 100%
       partprobe /dev/$disk
   
       sleep 5
   
       mkfs.ext4 "/dev/$part"
   
       mkdir -p /datadisk
       mount "/dev/$part" /datadisk
   
       break
     fi
   done
   

2. On Windows:

   $disk = Get-Disk | Where-Object partitionstyle -eq 'raw' | Select-Object -First 1
   $disk | Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle MBR -PassThru | `
     New-Partition -UseMaximumSize -DriveLetter E | `
     Format-Volume -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel 'Data' -Confirm:$false -Force