Windows PowerShell’s Get-PSDrive
This cmdlet is not only useful for researching the local disk structure, but it also gives us an insight into how PowerShell views the registry as a drive.
Topics for PowerShell’s Get-PSDrive Cmdlet
- List PowerShell’s PSProviders
- List Disk Capacity and Calculate FreeSpace %
- Get-PSDrive’s Properties
- Real-life Task: Delete Old Files in Recycle Bin
- Get-PSDrive Alternative Providers
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List PowerShell’s PSProviders
This is how to enumerate PowerShell’s ‘Providers’. It is interesting to see how Microsoft designed PowerShell to view the registry, functions and variables as ‘drives’.
# Get-PSDrive
Get-PSDrive
List Disk Capacity and Calculate FreeSpace %
- Let us begin by filtering for just disk drives using the parameter -FileSystem
- A check with Get-Member reveals there is no drive capacity property, however, we can add .free and .used to create this property.
- Once we have the total capacity for each drive, we can do the math to calculate the % freespace.
- The rest of the script is concerned with creating a pretty display using PowerShell’s -f format command.
Clear-Host
$Drives = Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem
ForEach ($Drive in $Drives) {
"{0,2} {1,8:N0} {2,6:P0}" -f $Drive.Name,
($Drive.Free/1gb + $Drive.Used/1gb),
($Drive.free / (($Drive.free +0.001) + $Drive.used))
}
Note 1: I added a tiny amount to $Drive.free to swerve the divide by zero error for blank drives.
Note 2: You could create labels at line 3 by adding:
"{0,2} {1,4:N0} {2,10:P0}" -f "Drive", "GB", "FreeSpace"
An Alternative Method Using Format Table
This script also lists the disk drives with their capacity in GB (gigabytes) and % freespace, but it uses a slightly different approach.
Clear-Host
Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem | Format-Table Name,
@{Name="Disk Size(GB)";Expression={"{0,8:N0}" -f($_.free/1gb +$_.used/1gb)}},
@{Name="Free (%)";Expression={"{0,6:P0}" -f($_.free / ($_.free +$_.used))}} `
-AutoSize
Note 3: Measure-Command reveals little difference in the speed of my two Get-PSDrive techniques. However for this task, Get-WmiObject is much faster. See WMI disk method.
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Get-PSDrive’s Properties
Let us used the trusted PowerShell research cmdlet with an alias of GM (Get-Member).
# Investigate Get-PSDrive’s Properties and Methods
Clear-Host
Get-PSDrive | GM # Get-Member
Note 4: This is how I discovered a useful ScriptProperty called .free and another called .used.
Real-life Task: Delete Old Files in Recycle Bin
Here is a script which could delete files in your recycle bin that are older than 100 days.
Key point: you need to understand the difference between Get-Item and Remove-Item -recurse before it will deliver it’s potential, and actually zap files in the recycle bins in the various drives.
# PowerShell script to list files in the Recycle bin, which are older than 100 days
Clear-Host
ForEach ($DriveLetter in Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem) {
$DelPath = $DriveLetter.Name + ‘:\$Recycle.Bin’
Get-ChildItem $DelPath -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Where-Object { (Get-Date).AddDays(-100) -gt $_.LastWriteTime } |
Get-Item
}
Note 5: Replace Get-Item with ‘Remove-Item -recurse, but only make the change if you understand the implications.
Note 6: You may wish to adjust the value for .AddDays(-100).
Note 7: Once you understand that this script can clean-up the recycle bin, you may consider adding to a Scheduled Task.
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Get-PSDrive Alternative Providers
Most of my examples focus on the FileSystem, however you can employ Get-PSDrive to interrogate the Registry, the Environment, PowerShell’s Aliases or Variables, the secret is to specify with -PSProvider.
Clear-Host
Get-PSDrive -PSProvider Registry | Ft -AutoSize
Note: You could substitute Alias, or Variable for ‘Registry’.
The Truth! Forget Get-PSDrive, Get-ChildItem is all you need. Just remember that colon at the end of the PSProvider, thus:
Clear-Host
Get-ChildItem Alias:
# Get-ChildItem Variable:
Research Similar PowerShell Cmdlets
# PowerShell PSDrive Nouns and Similar
Clear-Host
Get-Command | Where {$_.Noun -Match ‘PSD’ -or $_.Noun -Match ‘PSP’}
See more on PowerShell PSProvider ยป
Summary of PowerShell Get-PSDrive
This cmdlet has a useful parameter called -PSProvider, it enables us not only to research the local disk structure, but also gives us an insight into how PowerShell accesses the registry as a drive.
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See more Windows PowerShell examples of variables
• Syntax • PowerShell Variables • Get-PSProvider • PowerShell Dollar Variable
• PowerShell Functions • Get-PSDrive • PowerShell New-PSDrive • Remove-PSDrive
• PowerShell Home • Foreach loops • PowerShell Foreach • Foreach-Object cmdlet
Please email me if you have a better example script. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.
