How to retrieve logical drive info in C#

1. Retrieving Drive Information using Management Classes

The first example will demonstrate how to gather drive information using ManagementScope, ManagementObjectSearcher, ObjectQuery, ManagementObjectCollection, and DirectoryInfo classes.

using System.Management;
using System.IO;

ManagementScope ms = new ManagementScope();
ObjectQuery oq = new ObjectQuery("SELECT DeviceID, VolumeName FROM Win32_LogicalDisk");
ManagementObjectSearcher mos = new ManagementObjectSearcher(ms, oq);

foreach (ManagementObject mo in mos.Get())
{
    string deviceId = mo["DeviceID"]?.ToString();
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(deviceId)) continue;  // Skip if DeviceID is null or empty
    
    DirectoryInfo newDI = new DirectoryInfo(deviceId);
    newDI.Refresh(); // Refresh to ensure directory info is up to date

    // Access FileSystemInfo directly without using GetFiles (which may be redundant if you need only general info)
    FileSystemInfo[] fileSystemInfos = newDI.GetFileSystemInfos();
    
    // Access or display details from "fileSystemInfos" array
    foreach (var fileInfo in fileSystemInfos)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"File or Directory: {fileInfo.FullName}, Type: {fileInfo.GetType().Name}");
    }
}

In this code snippet, we use System.Management and System.IO namespaces to interact with the system. The key part of the code is the ObjectQuery, where we run an SQL-like query to retrieve information about logical drives.

The query SELECT DeviceID, VolumeName FROM Win32_LogicalDisk fetches all logical drives. If you're interested only in removable disks, you can filter the results using a WHERE clause like this:

SELECT DeviceID, VolumeName FROM Win32_LogicalDisk WHERE DriveType = 2

Here, DriveType is a property of the Win32_LogicalDisk class, and the value 2 represents removable disks (such as USB drives).

2. Using DriveInfo Class to Retrieve Information

If you don’t need to filter by drive type and want a simple way to retrieve information from all drives, the DriveInfo class is an excellent option.

using System.IO;

DriveInfo[] allDrives = DriveInfo.GetDrives();
foreach (DriveInfo d in allDrives)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Drive {0}", d.Name);
    Console.WriteLine("Drive type: {0}", d.DriveType);
}

This code uses the DriveInfo.GetDrives() method to get all the drives on your system. It then prints the drive name and its type to the console.