Batch scripting: iterate over drive letters?

Question

In windows batch scripts, how can I iterate over all drive letters which correspond to physical volumes or mapped shares?

Answer 1

Also going to suggest a language switch, but to Powershell instead of VBS.

Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem

It's the wave of the future...

Answer 2

Maybe there are better tools now, but there used to be the fsutil command (WinXP).

fsutil fsinfo drives

this returns all the drives in the system.

Answer 3

This should work. it creates an array of all drives connected that can be accessed from a for loop. you can do what ever you want with the drives now. i have provided two examples to show how it works.

@echo off
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
cls

REM getting the output from fsutil fsinfo drives and putting it in the ogdrives variable
FOR /F "tokens=* USEBACKQ" %%F IN (`fsutil fsinfo drives`) DO (
SET ogdrives=%%F
)
REM making the drives variable the same as the ogdrives variable so it can be manipulated
set drives=!ogdrives!

REM formating the out so that it looks like 1+1+1+... for every drive that is connected
set drives=!drives:Drives^: =!
set drives=!drives:^:\=1!
set drives=!drives: =+!

REM still formating to find out how many drives there are, this bit gets rid of any letters there are
set charms=0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
for /L %%N in (10 1 62) do (
for /F %%C in ("!charms:~%%N,1!") do (
set drives=!drives:%%C=!
)
)
REM last for finding out the number, this removes the last characters since it is a leading + that shouldnt be there
set drives=!drives:~0,-1!
REM num is now the variable that contains the number of drives connected
set /a num=!drives!

REM reseting the drives variable to the original output so it can be manipulated again
set drives=!ogdrives!
REM this time it is being formated to list the drives as a solid string of drive letters like ABCD
set drives=!drives:Drives^: =!
set drives=!drives:^:\=!
set drives=!drives: =!

REM this is to iterate through that string of drive letters to seperate it into multiple single letter variables that are correlated to a number so they can be used later
:loop
REM the iter variable holds how many times this has looped so that when it hits the final drive it can exit
set /a iter=!iter!+1
REM the pos variable is the position in the string of drive letters that needs to be taken out for this iteration
set /a pos=!iter!-1

REM this sets the driveX variable where X is the drives correlated number to the letter of that drive from the long string of drive letters by using the pos variable
set drive!iter!=!drives:~%pos%,1!

REM this is checking to see if all drives have been assigned a number and if it has it will exit the loop
if !iter!==!num! goto oloop
goto loop
:oloop


REM drives are stored in variables %driveX% where X represents the drive number
REM the number of drives are stored in the %num% variable
REM below is an example for iterating through drives

REM this is an example of how to use the information gathered to iterate through the drives
REM we are using a for loop from 1 to the number of drives connected
for /L %%n in (1 1 !num!) do (
REM for every drive that is connected this will be ran
REM %%n contains a number which will increase since its a for loop
REM the drive driveX variable can then be used since drive1=A and drive2=B etc
echo drive %%n is !drive%%n!
REM you can see how i have embedded a variable inside a variable to create an array of sorts.
)
pause
exit
REM the actual variable names are drive1 drive2 drive3 but so that we can iterate through them we can just use a for loop and put the number in the variable
REM one way you can use this is with the where command since it will only search one drive at a time
REM you can do this like this 

for /L %%n in (1 1 !num!) do (

where /R !drive%%n!:\ *.txt

)

REM this will return a list of all txt files in the entire system since it searches all drives.

Answer 4

It's going to be much easier, and far more useful to go with VBScript in that case. http://authors.aspalliance.com/brettb/VBScriptDrivesCollection.asp

Answer 5

You can coax

wmic volume get driveletter

to be your data source here. Iterating can then be done with standard for /f.

Answer 6

You can try:

for %%i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO @if exist %%i: @echo %%i:

The main limitation with this code is the existance of a CD/DVD drive with no disk. It causes a carp for the user to insert a disk. If you have all CD/DVD drives mapped to Z: you could avoid the carp by removing the final Z in the set.

Rob

Answer 7

This works for me from msys, you didn't specify which bash interpreter you are using (the main ones would be msys or cygwin).

for i in `mount|grep "^.: "|cut -c1`; do
  echo iterating over drive $i
done