How to list physical disks?

How to list physical disks in Windows? In order to obtain a list of "\\\\.\PhysicalDrive0" available.

WMIC

wmic is a very complete tool

wmic diskdrive list

provide a (too much) detailed list, for instance

for less info

wmic diskdrive list brief

C

Sebastian Godelet mentions in the comments:

In C:

system("wmic diskdrive list");

As commented, you can also call the WinAPI, but... as shown in "How to obtain data from WMI using a C Application?", this is quite complex (and generally done with C++, not C).

PowerShell

Or with PowerShell:

Get-WmiObject Win32_DiskDrive

One way to do it:

Enumerate logical drives using GetLogicalDrives
For each logical drive, open a file named "\\.\X:" (without the quotes) where X is the logical drive letter.

Call DeviceIoControl passing the handle to the file opened in the previous step, and the dwIoControlCode parameter set to IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS:

HANDLE hHandle;
VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS diskExtents;
DWORD dwSize;
[...]

iRes = DeviceIoControl(
    hHandle,
    IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS,
    NULL,
    0,
    (LPVOID) &diskExtents,
    (DWORD) sizeof(diskExtents),
    (LPDWORD) &dwSize,
    NULL);

This returns information of the physical location of a logical volume, as a VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS structure.

In the simple case where the volume resides on a single physical drive, the physical drive number is available in diskExtents.Extents[0].DiskNumber

This might be 5 years too late :). But as I see no answer for this yet, adding this.

We can use Setup APIs to get the list of disks ie., devices in the system implementing GUID_DEVINTERFACE_DISK.

Once we have their device paths, we can issue IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_DEVICE_NUMBER to construct "\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE%d" with STORAGE_DEVICE_NUMBER.DeviceNumber

See also SetupDiGetClassDevs function

#include <Windows.h>
#include <Setupapi.h>
#include <Ntddstor.h>

#pragma comment( lib, "setupapi.lib" )

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

#define START_ERROR_CHK()           \
    DWORD error = ERROR_SUCCESS;    \
    DWORD failedLine;               \
    string failedApi;

#define CHK( expr, api )            \
    if ( !( expr ) ) {              \
        error = GetLastError( );    \
        failedLine = __LINE__;      \
        failedApi = ( api );        \
        goto Error_Exit;            \
    }

#define END_ERROR_CHK()             \
    error = ERROR_SUCCESS;          \
    Error_Exit:                     \
    if ( ERROR_SUCCESS != error ) { \
        cout << failedApi << " failed at " << failedLine << " : Error Code - " << error << endl;    \
    }

int main( int argc, char **argv ) {

    HDEVINFO diskClassDevices;
    GUID diskClassDeviceInterfaceGuid = GUID_DEVINTERFACE_DISK;
    SP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DATA deviceInterfaceData;
    PSP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DETAIL_DATA deviceInterfaceDetailData;
    DWORD requiredSize;
    DWORD deviceIndex;

    HANDLE disk = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;
    STORAGE_DEVICE_NUMBER diskNumber;
    DWORD bytesReturned;

    START_ERROR_CHK();

    //
    // Get the handle to the device information set for installed
    // disk class devices. Returns only devices that are currently
    // present in the system and have an enabled disk device
    // interface.
    //
    diskClassDevices = SetupDiGetClassDevs( &diskClassDeviceInterfaceGuid,
                                            NULL,
                                            NULL,
                                            DIGCF_PRESENT |
                                            DIGCF_DEVICEINTERFACE );
    CHK( INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE != diskClassDevices,
         "SetupDiGetClassDevs" );

    ZeroMemory( &deviceInterfaceData, sizeof( SP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DATA ) );
    deviceInterfaceData.cbSize = sizeof( SP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DATA );
    deviceIndex = 0;

    while ( SetupDiEnumDeviceInterfaces( diskClassDevices,
                                         NULL,
                                         &diskClassDeviceInterfaceGuid,
                                         deviceIndex,
                                         &deviceInterfaceData ) ) {

        ++deviceIndex;

        SetupDiGetDeviceInterfaceDetail( diskClassDevices,
                                         &deviceInterfaceData,
                                         NULL,
                                         0,
                                         &requiredSize,
                                         NULL );
        CHK( ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_BUFFER == GetLastError( ),
             "SetupDiGetDeviceInterfaceDetail - 1" );

        deviceInterfaceDetailData = ( PSP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DETAIL_DATA ) malloc( requiredSize );
        CHK( NULL != deviceInterfaceDetailData,
             "malloc" );

        ZeroMemory( deviceInterfaceDetailData, requiredSize );
        deviceInterfaceDetailData->cbSize = sizeof( SP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DETAIL_DATA );

        CHK( SetupDiGetDeviceInterfaceDetail( diskClassDevices,
                                              &deviceInterfaceData,
                                              deviceInterfaceDetailData,
                                              requiredSize,
                                              NULL,
                                              NULL ),
             "SetupDiGetDeviceInterfaceDetail - 2" );

        disk = CreateFile( deviceInterfaceDetailData->DevicePath,
                           GENERIC_READ,
                           FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE,
                           NULL,
                           OPEN_EXISTING,
                           FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,
                           NULL );
        CHK( INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE != disk,
             "CreateFile" );

        CHK( DeviceIoControl( disk,
                              IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_DEVICE_NUMBER,
                              NULL,
                              0,
                              &diskNumber,
                              sizeof( STORAGE_DEVICE_NUMBER ),
                              &bytesReturned,
                              NULL ),
             "IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_DEVICE_NUMBER" );

        CloseHandle( disk );
        disk = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;

        cout << deviceInterfaceDetailData->DevicePath << endl;
        cout << "\\\\?\\PhysicalDrive" << diskNumber.DeviceNumber << endl;
        cout << endl;
    }
    CHK( ERROR_NO_MORE_ITEMS == GetLastError( ),
         "SetupDiEnumDeviceInterfaces" );

    END_ERROR_CHK();

Exit:

    if ( INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE != diskClassDevices ) {
        SetupDiDestroyDeviceInfoList( diskClassDevices );
    }

    if ( INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE != disk ) {
        CloseHandle( disk );
    }

    return error;
}

The answer is far simpler than all the above answers. The physical drive list is actually stored in a Registry key which also gives the device mapping.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\disk\Enum

Count is the number of PhysicalDrive# and each numbered Registry Value is the corresponding physical drive.

For example, Registry Value "0" is PhysicalDrive0. The value is the actual device PhysicalDrive0 is mapped to. The value contained here can be passed into CM_Locate_DevNode within parameter pDeviceID to use the plug and play services. This will allow you to gather a wealth of information on the device. Such as the properties from Device Manager like "Friendly Display Name" if you need a name for the drive, serial numbers and more.

There is no need for WMI services which may not be running on the system or other hackery and this functionality has been present in Windows since at least 2000 and continues to be the case in Windows 10.

How to list physical disks?

WMIC

C

PowerShell

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