Aug 8, 2012 Posted by newlife007 on Aug 8, 2012 in Scripting | 8 comments

Displaying Logical Drives with PowerShell

PowerShell is a powerful scripting language and can do many things. One task that can be used over and over is to get the logical drives off a system. One you have this information you can then perform tasks like searching for files, directories, reporting usage etc..

In this post I will be simply showing how to create a variable and retrieve the data for the logical drives using WMI object win32_logicaldisk.

If we just enter Get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk we see the output showing Device ID, DriveType, ProviderName, FreeSpace, Size and VolumeName.

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk
DeviceID     : B:
DriveType    : 3
ProviderName :
FreeSpace    :
Size         :
VolumeName   :

DeviceID     : C:
DriveType    : 3
ProviderName :
FreeSpace    : 59039604736
Size         : 159724335104
VolumeName   : Windows 7

DeviceID     : D:
DriveType    : 5
ProviderName :
FreeSpace    :
Size         :
VolumeName   :

DeviceID     : E:
DriveType    : 5
ProviderName :
FreeSpace    :
Size         :
VolumeName   :

Now let’s take this a bit further and tell it we want DriveType 3. Which in this instance we see drive D: removed from the list, which is DriveType 5 (CD-ROM)

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk| ?{$_.drivetype -eq 3}

DeviceID     : B:
DriveType    : 3
ProviderName :
FreeSpace    :
Size         :
VolumeName   :

DeviceID     : C:
DriveType    : 3
ProviderName :
FreeSpace    : 59039604736
Size         : 159724335104
VolumeName   : Windows 7

So what can we do next? Well, how about let’s create a list of just the drive name? No problem, let’s build on the command and add the foreach-object and grab the name.

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk| ?{$_.drivetype -eq 3} | foreach-object {$_.name}
B:
C:

Now we have something we can work with and can assign this to a variable that we can use in a script. Let’s take the line and add $drives = to the front of the command and create the $drives variable which we can reference.

$drives = Get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk| ?{$_.drivetype -eq 3} | foreach-object {$_.name}

Now lets go a step further and get the first level of the directory for the drive. We need to do a foreach and use the Get-ChildItem cmdlet.

$drives = Get-WmiObject win32_logicaldisk| ?{$_.drivetype -eq 3} | foreach-object {$_.name}
foreach ($drivename in $drives)
{
cd -Path $drivename
Get-ChildItem $drivename
}

So as you can see there are many other possibilities from what was touched on here. Have fun and keep PowerShelling !!!

8 Responses to “Displaying Logical Drives with PowerShell”

1. Bill Moore says:

   December 18, 2013 at 6:18 pm

   This post was helpful to me today. For as simple as this is (?{$_.drivetype -eq 3} | foreach-object {$_.name}) it was really causing me fits. I will using something similar on a post I am working on for my blog about offline domain joining pc’s and will be sure to credit you appropriately. Thanks for posting this. You are now a part of my feed list. 🙂

   bill

   Reply
   • Bill Moore says:

     December 18, 2013 at 6:20 pm

     “I will *be”

     To avoid feeding the trolls.

     Reply
   • newlife007 says:

     December 18, 2013 at 7:01 pm

     Thanks Bill I appreciate the feedback, I post scripts and How To’s from what I am using daily at my job as a System Admin. I plan to have more PowerShell and tricks in the future.

     Reply
2. venkat teki says:

   March 26, 2016 at 2:01 pm

   Hi,

   Does this query also lists the NFS shares exposed from this windows machine?

   Reply
   • newlife007 says:

     March 27, 2016 at 11:53 am

     The query is only for logical disks, if you want to see shares use Get-WmiObject Win32_share

     Reply
     • venkat teki says:

       March 28, 2016 at 6:28 am

       Thanks!
       But, Win32_Share is not returning me the NFS shares unless i map those to a network drive.

       But, showmount -e is showing the nfs shares.

       My doubt is– is it mandatory to map the nfs shared resource to a network drive?

       Reply
       • newlife007 says:

         March 28, 2016 at 10:46 am

         Sorry I missed that in your previous question on the NFS Share. The Win32_Share is correct in what it is showing you for drives. It doesn’t know the NFS mount point but when you map it to a drive it will see it. There are NFS Cmdlets for viewing and working with NFS that is available for Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 and higher found here https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/%5Clibrary/jj603081(v=wps.630).aspx

         Reply
3. ravi says:

   February 20, 2018 at 7:25 am

   I am using the below function to get the drives disk information from the remote servers. I am unable to get the few disk information. Could you please help me to get it.

   $disks = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_LogicalDisk -ComputerName $computer -Filter “DriveType = 3”

   Reply

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