Cross platform way to list disk drives on Linux, Windows and Mac using Python?

There isn't really a unified naming scheme for Linux devices that guarantees you a formatable block device. There are conventions, but they can vary widely and I can call my thumb-drive /Thomas/O if I want and there is no cross-platform way in Python to know:

  1. That /Thomas/O corresponds to /dev/sdf1
  2. That /dev/sdf1 can have a FAT32 filesystem made on it
  3. That /dev/sdf is not preferred to /dev/sdf1

I'm pretty sure that neither is there a cross-platform Python module which will allow you to determine that H:/ is formattable on a Windows system but that Z:/ is not.

Each system will require its own specific checks and validations which you could best learn from studying open-source disk manipulation software.


I don't see a way in psutil to include net mounts on Windows. I.e., \foobar\home is mapped to X:, but X: does not appear in the list returned by psutil.disk_partitions() (local drives are).

Update: To include net drives in the returned list, simply use:

psutil.disk_partitions(all=True)

Works quite well.


The psutil package (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/psutil) has a disk_partitions function.

Windows:

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.disk_partitions()
[sdiskpart(device='C:\\', mountpoint='C:\\', fstype='NTFS', opts='rw,fixed'), sdiskpart(device='D:\\', mountpoint='D:\\', fstype='NTFS', opts='rw,fixed'), sdiskpart(device='E:\\', mountpoint='E:\\', fstype='', opts='cdrom'), sdiskpart(device='F:\\', mountpoint='F:\\', fstype='NTFS', opts='rw,fixed')]

Linux:

>>> import psutil
>>> psutil.disk_partitions()
[sdiskpart(device='/dev/sda1', mountpoint='/', fstype='ext4', opts='rw,errors=remount-ro'), sdiskpart(device='/dev/sr0', mountpoint='/media/VBOXADDITIONS_4.3.10_93012', fstype='iso9660', opts='ro,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500,uhelper=udisks')]