Start PowerShell script when USB drive is inserted

powershell, windows

Solution

You can use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) events to detect when a USB flash drive is inserted. You can create a temporary event registration using the `Register-WmiEvent` cmdlet.

Let's say that you have a script file called `c:\test\script.ps1`. This script will be used to respond to events when they occur.

Add-Content -Path $PSScriptRoot\test.txt -Value 'USB Flash Drive was inserted.';

Then, you need to register for WMI events using the `Register-WmiEvent` cmdlet in a separate script. You will need to specify the `-Action` and `-Query` parameters at a minimum. The PowerShell `ScriptBlock` that is passed to the `-Action` parameter will be invoked when an event occurs. The `-Query` parameter contains the WMI event query that will be used to poll WMI for events. I have provided a sample below.

# Define a WMI event query, that looks for new instances of Win32_LogicalDisk where DriveType is "2"
# http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394173(v=vs.85).aspx
$Query = "select * from __InstanceCreationEvent within 5 where TargetInstance ISA 'Win32_LogicalDisk' and TargetInstance.DriveType = 2";

# Define a PowerShell ScriptBlock that will be executed when an event occurs
$Action = { & C:\test\script.ps1;  };

# Create the event registration
Register-WmiEvent -Query $Query -Action $Action -SourceIdentifier USBFlashDrive;

Since you mentioned that you wanted to launch a PowerShell script file on the USB drive, when this event occurs, you can change the `-Action` `ScriptBlock` to this:

$Action = { & ('{0}\ufd.ps1' -f $event.SourceEventArgs.NewEvent.TargetInstance.Name);  };

The above code will dynamically execute the `ufd.ps1` script file on the root of the USB drive that was just inserted.

Problem

Original source