ASM Disks Stamping on Windows

When we start the installer for the Grid Infrastructure installation, and select either “Install and configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster” or “Install and configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server” option on the first screen

later we see a screen where we need to select disk(s) for the creation of ASM diskgroups. As you see in the following screenshot

As you see in the above e screenshot, there is no disk visible in the list which we can select. The reason is because we have not done disk stamping which is required to be done on Windows platform; before we can use disks for the creation of diskgroup(s). To “Stamp Disk”, first we need to identify the disks, initialize them, and then create logical partitions.

Initialize the Disks
Right click on “My Computer” and click “Manage”

Now click on “Disk Management”. If a box pops up to initialize the disks, select the appropriate disks and then select “MBR (Master Boot Record)” and click OK.

Now the disks have been initialized and ready for partitions creation. You may proceed with this GUI and create partitions after right clicking on each dist, your you can use DISKPART utility to create the disk partitions. First you need to create an extended partition and then logical partition.

Partition the Disks using DISKPART utility

Open a command line window and type “diskpart” - it will take us into DISKPART command line tool to partition the disks. Issue “list disk” command to view all the disks.

Issue “Select disk <disk_number>” command to select the disk, then create extended partition, and then logical partition; as shown in this screenshot.

We will repeat same steps for all the disks which we want to use for ASM.

Stamp Disks

Now we need to come back to installation screen and click on “Stamp Disk” button.

When we click on “Stamp Disk” button; it actually initiates asm tool (which can also be initiated manually using %ORACLE_HOME%\bin\asmtoolg.exe after the installation completes and if we want to stamp the disks in future).
Click Next on first screen of the wizard.

Next screen will automatically list all the disks available for stamping. For this example, I selected all the available disks. Non available disks can be seen in grey and cannot be selected. Click the checkbox and provide any text which you want to be prefixed with the stamped disks. It is better to specify the name of our disk group here so that we can easily identify which disks belong to which diskgroup. Click Next.