Exploring Get-PSDrive in PowerShell

Welcome back to Wahmans Powershell blog! Today we’ll take a closer look at a very helpful PowerShell cmdlet: Get-PSDrive. Whether you are just starting out with PowerShell or are already writing advanced scripts, understanding this cmdlet can help you better manage your resources and file systems.

What is Get-PSDrive?

According to Microsoft’s documentation, Get-PSDrive gets drives in the current session. But this isn’t just limited to your file system drives like C: or D: — PowerShell drives can also expose data from other providers such as the registry, environment variables, and more.

Let’s explore some usage examples

1. Basic Usage: List All Drives

When you simply run Get-PSDrive, it lists all available drives currently in the session.

Get-PSDrive

This will show you drives like C:, D: (for file system), Env: (environment variables), HKLM: (registry), etc.

2. Filter Specific Drive Type

You might want to list only file system drives. You can filter using the Provider parameter:

Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem

This command returns all file system drives like C:, D:, or mapped network drives, excluding drives like Env: or HKCU:.

3. Check Free and Used Space

Each file system drive includes information such as used and free space. You can use this to check available space on a drive:

$drive = Get-PSDrive -Name C
"Drive C has $($drive.Free / 1GB) GB free space and $($drive.Used / 1GB) GB used space."

This outputs the amount of free and used space on the C: drive, converting bytes to gigabytes.

4. Create a Custom PSDrive (Advanced)

You can also create your own custom drive using New-PSDrive, for instance to map a drive to a registry path or network share, and use Get-PSDrive to verify it:

New-PSDrive -Name MyEnv -PSProvider Environment -Root ""
Get-PSDrive -Name MyEnv

This creates a new drive called MyEnv: that maps to environment variables. You can now browse it like a normal drive using cd MyEnv:.

Wrap-up

Get-PSDrive is a powerful and flexible cmdlet that provides insight into both traditional and non-traditional drives in PowerShell. Whether checking disk space or exploring environment variables, this tool is a must-know for every PowerShell user.

Happy scripting, and I will see you in the next post!