Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

Drives using providers

The output from Get-PSProvider shows that each provider has one or more drives associated with it.

Alternatively, you can see the list of drives (and the associated provider) using Get-PSDrive, as shown in the following code:

PS> Get-PSDriveName     Used (GB) Free (GB) Provider       Root----     --------- --------- --------       ----Alias                        Alias  C 89.13      89.13    111.64 FileSystem     C:\Cert                         Certificate    \  D             0.45     21.86 FileSystem     D:\ Env                          Environment Function                     Function HKCU                         Registry       HKEY_CURRENT_USERHKLM                         Registry       HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEVariable                     Variable WSMan                        WSMan

As providers are presented as a filesystem, accessing a provider is similar to working with a drive. This example shows how Get-ChildItem changes when exploring the Cert drive:

PS C:\> Set-Location ...