cormanaz has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Good day bros. I want to write a script that will automatically copy files from a flash drive to a backup directory on my hard drive. I have given the drive a particular name, but since it might be plugged into the USB along with other devices I can't be sure it will always have the same drive letter. So the question is, how do I read the entries in "my computer" to look for the drive with a given name?

opendir/readdir presumes (as far as I can tell) that you can specify the drive letter. I looked at Win32::FileOp for a solution. It would let me browse for it with a dialog box, but I want to find the drive letter without browsing by reading the items in "my computer" a picking the one with the correct name.

Your advice appreciated.

Steve

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Locating a flash drive on windows
by cormanaz (Deacon) on Oct 11, 2007 at 22:52 UTC
    You would think this would be a simple thing to do, but you would be wrong. I found an answer myself at Microsoft TechNet. Here's an adaptation of the code to do the job I requested: 
    use strict;
use Win32::OLE('in');
use constant wbemFlagReturnImmediately => 0x10;
use constant wbemFlagForwardOnly => 0x20;

my $flashdriveletter;
my $flashdrivename = 'foo';
my $computer = ".";
my $objWMIService = Win32::OLE->GetObject("winmgmts:\\\\$computer\\roo
+t\\CIMV2") or die "WMI connection failed.\n";
my $colItems = $objWMIService->ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_LogicalD
+isk","WQL",wbemFlagReturnImmediately | wbemFlagForwardOnly);

foreach my $objItem (in $colItems) {
    if ( $objItem->{VolumeName} eq /$flashdrivename/ ) {
        $flashdriveletter = $objItem->{Caption};
    }
}

    [download]

    The page lists about a zillion other attributes of the drive you can get from $objitem.

    Steve

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Locating a flash drive on windows
by Anonymous Monk on Oct 11, 2007 at 22:51 UTC

    Hi,

    I use the following to get drive info on Windows XP.

    
use Win32API::File qw( :Func );

%driiv_name = ();
@drives_volumes = ();
@driivs = ();

sub find_drives
{
    eval{
        @driivs= getLogicalDrives();
    };
    if( $@ ) {
        my $msg = $mw->MesgBox(
                      -title     => 'Fatal Error.',
                   -text      => "No Logical Drives found.",
                   -icon      => 'ERROR',
                   -buttons   => ['OK'] )->Show;
    }
        
    my $lup = 0;
    my $endlup = scalar( @driivs );
    
    while( $lup < $endlup ) {
        $sRootPath = $driivs[$lup];
        GetVolumeInformation( $sRootPath, $osVolName, $lVolName, 
                $ouSerialNum, $ouMaxNameLen, $ouFsFlags, $osFsType, $l
+FsType );
        $drives_volumes[$lup] = sprintf "%-5s%15s", $sRootPath, $osVol
+Name ;
        $driiv_name{$drives_volumes[$lup]} = $sRootPath;
        $lup++;
    }
    
    
    $FS_Tname = $drives_volumes[0];
    $FD_Tname = $drives_volumes[0];
    
}

    [download]


    This is a stripped down version.
    Hopefully I haven;t taken out anything vital.

    J.C.
[reply]
[d/l]

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