Skip to main content

How to use PowerShell to scan a server for a specific file type?

This is an easy one liner:

Get-WMIObject Win32_LogicalDisk -filter "DriveType = 3" | Select-Object DeviceID | ForEach-Object {Get-Childitem ($_.DeviceID + "\") -include *.wav -recurse}

Let’s break this one down into its individual parts.


Get-WMIObject Win32_LogicalDisk –filter “DriveType = 3”


In the above line, we are using WMI to access all the logical drives on the server.  We are using logical drives because we do not know how the drives are partitioned.  We are also looking for Drive type #3. Here is a list of the different drive types:


1 - Drive could not be determined



2 - Removable drive



3 - Local hard disk



4 - Network disk



5 - Compact disk (CD)



6 - RAM disk



 



Select-Object DeviceID



The Select-Object cmdlet allows us to focus just the DeviceID. The DeviceID is the drive letter.



ForEach-Object {Get-Childitem ($_.DeviceID + "\") -include *.wav -recurse}



The ForEach-Object cmdlet allows us to examine one object at a time in an array of objects.  The Get-Childitem is functionally the same as DIR in dos.  By using the $_.DeviceID we are simply saying “get the drive letter of the hard drive we are looking at.”  Adding the “\” sets up the correct syntax for our search. the –include parameter tells PowerShell what we are interested in.  In this case, we are looking for all files with a .wav extension. The –recurse parameter gets the items in a location, and in all child locations.  It is what allows us to search through each folder, and sub folder on each hard drive.



We can take this one step forward.  The remove the files found, add this to the end of the command line above



| Remove-Item



Be careful with this. You can do some damage if you are not careful. If you want to confirm each deletion, uses this line instead:



| Remove-Item – confirm

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding a Comment to a GPO with PowerShell

As I'm writing this article, I'm also writing a customization for a PowerShell course I'm teaching next week in Phoenix.  This customization deals with Group Policy and PowerShell.  For those of you who attend my classes may already know this, but I sit their and try to ask the questions to myself that others may ask as I present the material.  I finished up my customization a few hours ago and then I realized that I did not add in how to put a comment on a GPO.  This is a feature that many Group Policy Administrators may not be aware of. This past summer I attended a presentation at TechEd on Group Policy.  One organization in the crowd had over 5,000 Group Policies.  In an environment like that, the comment section can be priceless.  I always like to write in the comment section why I created the policy so I know its purpose next week after I've completed 50 other tasks and can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago. In the Group Policy module for PowerShell V3, th

Return duplicate values from a collection with PowerShell

If you have a collection of objects and you want to remove any duplicate items, it is fairly simple. # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2   # Remove the duplicate values. $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What if you want only the duplicate values and nothing else? # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2   #Create a second collection with duplicate values removed. $Set2 = $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique   # Return only the duplicate values. ( Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $Set2 -DifferenceObject $Set1 ) . InputObject | Select-Object – Unique 1 2 This works with objects as well as numbers.  The first command creates a collection with 2 duplicates of both 1 and 2.   The second command creates another collection with the duplicates filtered out.  The Compare-Object cmdlet will first find items that are diffe

How to list all the AD LDS instances on a server

AD LDS allows you to provide directory services to applications that are free of the confines of Active Directory.  To list all the AD LDS instances on a server, follow this procedure: Log into the server in question Open a command prompt. Type dsdbutil and press Enter Type List Instances and press Enter . You will receive a list of the instance name, both the LDAP and SSL port numbers, the location of the database, and its status.