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Getting Disk Drive Information using WMI and C#
About WMI
In order to get a list of all the disk drives available on the current machine, the .NET Framework won't be enough, and so we'll have to run a WMI query. Since WMI uses WQL (WMI Query Language), it's very easy to retrieve the information which we need, much like running queries on a SQL

Designing the application
Visual Studio 2005 is what I built my project in, although the code will work in Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2008 as well. On a form we'll need a ComboBox called cmbHdd that will store a list of available disk-drive, and a whole lot of labels. They will display all of the fields that WMI gives to us, or almost all. I'm not going to enumerate all the labels here since it's easy enough for you to figure them out from the code. Here's what my form looks like:

 
Add System.Management Reference
In the .NET tab scroll down to System.Management and click OK to add this reference.
 


Add System.Management Reference

Switch to code view and add the following using statement:


using System.Management;



In the form's Load event we want to retrieve all the disk drives, so we run our
first WMI query:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    // Get all the disk drives

  ManagementObjectSearcher mosDisks=new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_DiskDrive");

    // Loop through each object (disk) retrieved by WMI

    foreach (ManagementObject moDisk in mosDisks.Get())

    {

        // Add the HDD to the list (use the Model field as the item's caption)

        cmbHdd.Items.Add(moDisk["Model"].ToString());

    }

}
Nothing complicated here, except a loop going through the list of WMI values. When a selection from the drop-down list is made, we will want to get additional information on the chosen disk drive
 

private void cmbHdd_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    // Get all the disk drives from WMI that match the Model name selected in the ComboBox

   ManagementObjectSearcher mosDisks=new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_DiskDrive WHERE Model = '" + cmbHdd.SelectedItem + "'");

    // Loop through the drives retrieved, although it should normally be only one loop going on here

    foreach (ManagementObject moDisk in mosDisks.Get())

    {

        // Set all the fields to the appropriate values

        lblType.Text = "Type: " + moDisk["MediaType"].ToString();

        lblModel.Text = "Model: " + moDisk["Model"].ToString();

        lblSerial.Text = "Serial: " + moDisk["SerialNumber"].ToString();

        lblInterface.Text = "Interface: " + moDisk["InterfaceType"].ToString();

        // The capacity in gigabytes is easily calculated

        lblCapacity.Text = "Capacity: " + moDisk["Size"].ToString() + " bytes (" + Math.Round(((((double)Convert.ToDouble(moDisk["Size"]) / 1024) / 1024) / 1024), 2) + " GB)";

        lblPartitions.Text = "Partitions: " + moDisk["Partitions"].ToString();

        lblSignature.Text = "Signature: " + moDisk["Signature"].ToString();

        lblFirmware.Text = "Firmware: " + moDisk["FirmwareRevision"].ToString();

        lblCylinders.Text = "Cylinders: " + moDisk["TotalCylinders"].ToString();

        lblSectors.Text = "Sectors: " + moDisk["TotalSectors"].ToString();

        lblHeads.Text = "Heads: " + moDisk["TotalHeads"].ToString();

        lblTracks.Text = "Tracks: " + moDisk["TotalTracks"].ToString();

  lblBytesPerSect.Text = "Byte sper Sector:"+moDisk["BytesPerSector"].ToString();

lblSectorsPerTrack.Text="Sector per Track:"+moDisk["SectorsPerTrack"].ToString();

lblTracksPerCyl.Text="Tracks per Cylinder:"+moDisk["TracksPerCylinder"].ToString();

    }

}


You're now ready to compile. Here's how the applications looks on the machine I tested, one that has a single hard-drive and a memory stick plugged in. You can see that the memory stick, just like any other storage media you have plugged in, will show as a disk drive, so don't let the term "disk" confuse you in what will be retrieved here. All the storage drives that are not optical removable media are sure to be retrieved by the WMI query in this application, for as long as they show up in the Computer window at least.
.

Disk drive info
 

Disk-drive Information
It doesn't get any easier than this, and using WMI you can get a lot of other information just as easy. Here are a few other tutorials we have here at Geekpedia that will teach you more about WMI:
 
/ Serial numbers are in Win32_PhysicalMedia
var mediaClass = new ManagementClass( "Win32_PhysicalMedia" );
ManagementObjectCollection mediaList = mediaClass.GetInstances();
var nameList = new List<String>();
var serialNumberList = new List<String>();
foreach ( ManagementObject medium in mediaList )
{
PropertyDataCollection mediumProperties = medium.Properties;
String tag = "";
String serialNumber = "";
foreach ( PropertyData property in mediumProperties )
{
if ( property.Name.Equals( "Tag" ) ) // property 'Name' is null !!!
tag = property.Value.ToString();
if ( property.Name.Equals( "SerialNumber" ) )
{
try
{
serialNumber = property.Value.ToString().Trim();
}
catch ( Exception )
{
serialNumber = "?";
}
}
}

nameList.Add( tag );
serialNumberList.Add( serialNumber );
}
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
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