如何使用python检测Windows中的备份驱动器？

Question

I have 2 drives, OS drive and the backup drive in windows.

I want to write a python script that detects the backup drive and returns the letter it is assigned and makes sure it is an external disk not thumbdrive or dvdrom . The letter assigned to the drive can vary.

Is there a way to do that in python? I have been searching through but to no avail.

Answer 1

Expanding on my comment

Is there a way to do that in python?

I think the short answer is: No. Not in Python, not in another language.

I want to write a python script that detects the backup drive

I don't think there's a way to do this. There's nothing inherent to a drive that could be used to detect whether a connected drive is intended by the user to be a "backup" drive or for something else. In other words, whether a drive is a "backup" drive or not is determined by the user's behavior, not by the properties of the drive itself.

There're flags that can be set when a drive gets formatted (eg whether it's a bootable drive or not, etc), but that's about it.

If we're talking about a method that's intended for your personal use only , then something that might work is the following:

1. Create a naming convention for your drives (ie their labels when formatting), such as making sure your backup drives have the word "backup" somewhere in it;
2. Make sure you never deviate from this naming convention;
3. Write a program that will iterate over your drives looking for the word "backup" in their names (a simple regular expression would work).

Obviously, this would only work as long as the convention is followed. This is not a solution that you can arbitrarily apply in other situations where this assumption does not hold.

makes sure it is an external disk not thumbdrive or dvdrom.

This one might be tricky. If you connect an external HDD into a USB plug, the system would know the drive's capacity and the fact that it's connected through the USB interface, but I think that's about it.

Answer 2

I have found a way to detect the drive if its a external HDD using python.

import wmi
c = wmi.WMI()
for disk in c.Win32_LogicalDisk(["Caption", "VolumeName"], DriveType=3):

print disk