Table of Contents

General Description
Creating disk images
Resizing disk images

General Description

The "MkDskCmd" utility:

Creates empty disk images of a given standard or custom disk type or a custom disk size
Transfers existing disk images of one type to disk images of another type.

To start the utility open "cmd.exe" from Administrator in the Start menu and switch to the CHARON installation folder then the "\Build_XXX\xXX" child folder where the utility is located.

Creating disk images

The first step is to obtain the disk type of the disk that needs to be created:

...> mkdskcmd -list

This command results in a list of all the supported disk types.

Choose the desired disk type (for example "RZ22") then use the "mkdskcmd" command to create the virtual disk image as shown below:

...> mkdskcmd -disk rz22 -output rz22.vdisk

A disk container "rz22.vdisk" will be created in the current directory.

A file "rz22.avdisk" will also be created. This file helps CHARON to accurately recognize a specific disk image type. It is recommended to put the ".avdisk" file in the same directory as the created disk image.

It is also possible to create custom disk images using the "-blcount" (blocks count) and "-blsize" (blocks size) switches.

For a list of all available parameters use the "–help" switch:

...> mkdskcmd -help

mkdisk for CHARON utility v. 1.17
Copyright: STROMASYS, 2020

Usage:
mkdskcmd [Options]

Options:
-h, -help - display help screen

-o, -output <file> - specify output file name

-d, -disk <name> - specify the disk name from Disk table

-z, -blsize <value> - specify the block size in bytes (custom disk image)

-c, -blcount <value> - specify number of the blocks (custom disk image)

-a, -avtable <file> - specify AVDISK table file

-r, -resize <file> [<disk-name>]
- resize the disk image
<file> - file name of the disk image to be resized
<disk-name> - name of the disk from the Disk table

<file> will either have the specified number of blocks added to the
end or be truncated at the new smaller size.

To specify a custom disk size, use the following parameters:
-resize <file> -blsize <value> -blcount <value>

-s, -shrink - mandatory parameter when resizing to smaller disk

-l, -list - to display AVDISK table

-q, -quiet - run in quiet mode

Return value:
0 - Success
Non zero - Failure

Examples:
mkdskcmd -help
mkdskcmd -list
mkdskcmd -avtable mkdsk.vtable -output rk07.vdisk -disk rk07
mkdskcmd -output disks\custom.vdisk -blsize 512 -blcount 16384
mkdskcmd -r E:\disks\rz22.vdisk rz59 -a "C:\Program Files\CHARON\disks\mkdsk.vtable"

The "-avtable" parameter is used to work with an alternative disk specification database or to point to the standard database ("mkdsk.vtable") if it is in a location other than the current directory.

The "-blcount" (blocks count) and "-blsize" (blocks size) switches are used to create custom disk images.

Resizing disk images

The "MkDskCmd" utility is able to resize (copy) disk images of one type to a disk image of another type.

This operation is needed, for example, to obtain more free space on a disk image that already contains data.

Notes:

It is not possible to add more free space dynamically. The virtual machine must be stopped before performing this operation.
Resizing a disk image requires the operating system running on the Charon virtual machine to be able to handle Dynamic Volume Expansion. Please refer to the documentation of your operating system version. If this is not supported, please create a new virtual disk then backup and restore the existing data.

If a source disk image is larger than the target disk image, the extra data is lost. If the source disk image is smaller, it will be extended and padded with null bytes ('\0').

An example of the syntax follows:

...> mkdskcmd -resize <source disk file name> <source disk parameters> [-shrink] [-k]

where:

<source disk file name> - the file name of the disk image to be resized
<source disk parameters> - the disk type taken from the list of available disk types displayed by the "mkdskcmd -list" command or the disk geometry specification (see below).
-shrink or -k - used to force the shrink when the target disk size is smaller than the source disk size.

Example:

...> mkdskcmd -resize "C:\My Disks\rz22.vdisk" rz25

It is also possible to specify the disk parameters manually with "-blcount / -c" (blocks count) and "-blsize / -z" (blocks size) switches:

...> mkdskcmd -resize <source disk file name> -blsize <number> -blcount <number>

Example:

...> mkdskcmd -r "C:\My Disks\custom.vdisk" -z 512 -c 262134

There is a certain delay between the moment when the utility reports that a disk image has been resized and its actual availability to CHARON. This delay can reach up to several minutes in the case of very large disk resizes. This is because the host operating system needs time for the actual allocation of the enlarged file on HDD.

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