DriveInfo

Computers often have several drives—on Windows, these use letters such as C or D as names. The DriveInfo class provides helper methods for checking these drives.

C# method notes

With GetDrives() we can get an array of drives from a computer—this may be the most helpful DriveInfo method. The code is already debugged as it is part of .NET.

First example

Most Windows computers use the C drive name. In this program, we use the DriveInfo constructor and pass the one-character string literal "C."

using System;
using System.IO;

DriveInfo info = new DriveInfo("C");

// Print sizes.
Console.WriteLine(info.AvailableFreeSpace);
Console.WriteLine(info.TotalFreeSpace);
Console.WriteLine(info.TotalSize);
Console.WriteLine();

// Format and type.
Console.WriteLine(info.DriveFormat);
Console.WriteLine(info.DriveType);
Console.WriteLine();

// Name and directories.
Console.WriteLine(info.Name);
Console.WriteLine(info.RootDirectory);
Console.WriteLine(info.VolumeLabel);
Console.WriteLine();

// Ready.
Console.WriteLine(info.IsReady);
682166767616
682166767616
984045580288

NTFS
Fixed

C:\
C:\
OS

True

Example 2

Sometimes a program will need to get an array of all the drives on the computer. DriveInfo.GetDrives returns an array of DriveInfo class instances.

using System;
using System.IO;

// Print all drive names.
var drives = DriveInfo.GetDrives();
foreach (DriveInfo info in drives)
{
    Console.WriteLine(info.Name);
}
C:\
D:\

Summary

The DriveInfo class can be combined with the DirectoryInfo and FileInfo classes. This can improve file IO handling in certain programs.