asked on

Find drive letter of a named drive

Hi,

I want to write a simple backup batch file to backup to a USB drive amongst other things.

I can list the volume using diskpart /s diskscript.txt where diskscript.txt has "list volume" in it and then search for the diskname;
eg/
diskpart /s diskscript.txt | find "BACKUP"

I now need to extract the disk volume from the string and assign it to a variable.
Volume 4 F BACKUP FAT32 Removeable 1934 MB

I don't want to hard code the drive letter in the script as it may change. If awk was available as standard I'd be ok :-).

Is there a MSDOS alternative?

O/S is Windows XP Home/Professional.

I will up the points for a quick response... hell I may even do it anyway! :-)

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

PWeerakoon

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PWeerakoon

Also, if you want to assign the drive letter to a variable directly, replace "do echo %k" with "do set driveletter=%k"

then "echo %driveletter% to see what happens.

Julian Parker

ASKER

thx,

so far I have this;
echo list volume > disklist.inf
diskpart /s disklist.inf | find /i "CATHERINE" > vollist.inf
for /f " tokens=3 " %%I in (vollist.inf) do set USBDRIVE=%%I:

You mentioned it's possible to get rid of the output files I create, I tried this;

for /f "tokens=3" %%i in (echo list volume | diskpart /s | find /i "BACKUP") do echo %%i:

which seemed logical to me...until it failed :-)

SOLUTION

Qlemo

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Qlemo

with pipe, and only drive name, for use in a batch file:

for /F "tokens=3" %%D in ('echo list vol ^| diskpart ^| find "BACKUP"') do set drive=%%D

Note the ^|, the carret is required to "escape" the pipe so the shell does not interpret it on first pass (but on second, when for argument is executed).

Julian Parker

ASKER

I get an error;

%%D was unexpected at this time.

PWeerakoon

Use the "usebackq" option.

for /f "usebackq tokens=3" %%i in (`echo list volume | diskpart /s | find /i "BACKUP"`) do echo %%i

Here's a snippet from the help file...

  Finally, you can use the FOR /F command to parse the output of a
  command.  You do this by making the file-set between the
  parenthesis a back quoted string.  It will be treated as a command
  line, which is passed to a child CMD.EXE and the output is captured
  into memory and parsed as if it was a file.  So the following
  example:
 
    FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %i IN (`set`) DO @echo %i
 
  would enumerate the environment variable names in the current
  environment.

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Qlemo

No, usebackq is not of any use at the moment. It changes the way quotes are interpreted. The pipes have to be escaped anyway.

My line with %%D was for use in batch file, as already posted. If you want to try it on commandline, use only %D:

for /F "tokens=3" %D in ('echo list vol ^| diskpart ^| find "CATHERINE"') do set usbdrive=%D

Julian Parker

ASKER

sorry,

I knew that... just getting confused in my old age :-)

all sorted thanks, upping the points...

Julian Parker

ASKER

Thanks chaps, great work!

It was so the missus could do a backup without me and I needed to cater for almost all eventualities!