I'm working on a PowerShell script that checks the free space on a specific drive across all domain controllers in our setup. I've encountered a problem recently because our site-to-site link is down, which means I can't reach one of the DCs. I'm trying to handle the error that gets thrown when the script fails to connect to that particular DC, but I can't seem to get the error handling to work correctly. I'm using a `try/catch` block, but the error still interrupts the script. Here's the line that generates the error: `Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DeviceID='D:'" -ComputerName $allDCs`. Can anyone guide me on how to properly catch this error and provide a message indicating the connection issue?
5 Answers
Another option is to check for connectivity issues before querying disk space. You can use `Test-Connection` or `Test-NetConnection` to make sure you can reach the DC before running `Get-CimInstance`. This way, you'll avoid handling multiple errors later on.
That's a smart approach! By testing reachability first, you'll keep your output clean and won't get bogged down with too many error messages.
While `-ErrorAction` is useful, remember that it stops at the first error. You might want to capture all errors instead of stopping the script. Use `-ErrorVariable` to collect errors like this: `$allDisks = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DeviceID='D:'" -ComputerName $allDCs -ErrorVariable DiskErrors`. Then you can work with the collected errors later.
Good find! Also, keep in mind that if errors are reported and you don't want them to show on the host, you can use `-ErrorAction SilentlyContinue`.
To handle this, you should set the error action for the `Get-CimInstance` command. Using `-ErrorAction Stop` will make the errors terminating, allowing them to be caught in your `try/catch` block. Check out this link for more details on error handling in PowerShell! [Microsoft Blog on ErrorAction](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/erroraction-and-errorvariable/)
That’s right! PowerShell has different levels of errors. Using `-ErrorAction Stop` is the best approach to ensure that your `try/catch` handles it properly. Just be aware that some errors can slip through the cracks due to the layers of code involved.
Thanks for sharing the link! I'm definitely going to read up on it after lunch.
You can modify your command by adding `-ErrorAction Stop` directly in your `Get-CimInstance` line. This will force it to throw a terminating error for failures, making it compatible with `try/catch`. Try this: `$allDisks = @(Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DeviceID='D:'" -ComputerName $allDCs -ErrorAction Stop)`
This method looks promising! I’ll give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion!