Refer to/select a drive based only on its label? (i.e., not the drive letter)

Question

I'm trying to refer to a drive whose letter may change. I'd like to refer to it by its label (e.g., MyLabel (v:) within a Batch File. It can be referred to by V:\ . I'd like to refer to it by MyLabel.

(This was posted on Experts Echange for a month with no answer. Let's see how fast SO answers it )

Answer 1

The previous answers seem either overly complicated, and/or not particularly suited to a batch file.

This simple one liner should place the desired drive letter in variable myDrive. Obviously change "My Label" to your actual label.

for /f %%D in ('wmic volume get DriveLetter^, Label ^| find "My Label"') do set myDrive=%%D

If run from the command line (not in a batch file), then %%D must be changed to %D in both places.

Once the variable is set, you can refer to the drive using %myDrive%. For example

dir %myDrive%\someFolder

Answer 2

This bat file will give you the drive letter from a drive label:

Option Explicit
Dim num, args, objWMIService, objItem, colItems

set args = WScript.Arguments
num = args.Count

if num <> 1 then
   WScript.Echo "Usage: CScript DriveFromLabel.vbs <label>"
   WScript.Quit 1
end if

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk")

For Each objItem in colItems
  If strcomp(objItem.VolumeName, args.Item(0), 1) = 0 Then
    Wscript.Echo objItem.Name
  End If
Next

WScript.Quit 0

Run it as:

 cscript /nologo DriveFromLabel.vbs label

Answer 3

You can use the WMI query language for that. Take a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394592(VS.85).aspx for examples. The information you are looking for is available e.g. through the property VolumeName of the Win32_LogicalDisk class, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394173(VS.85).aspx

SELECT * FROM Win32_LogicalDisk WHERE VolumeName="MyLabel"