file system iteration

[rick]

In Unix, the file system hierarchy is like a tree that has a base or 
'root' that exposes objects (files and folders) that can easily be 
iterated over.


\ \  |  / /
  \ \ | / /
   \ \|/ /
    \ | /
     \|/
      |
      |
     Root

So, when I do os.chdir('/') I am at the base of the tree and can now use 
something like os.walk() to work with all of the file system objects.

In Windows, the file system is disjointed and there is now real 'root' 
At least none that I can see. It looks more like this:

| | | | | | |
|_|_|_|_|_|_|
A B C D E F G

How do you guys handle this when working with scripts that need to touch 
all files and folders on a Windows machine? I've been looping through 
A-Z like this:

import os.path

paths = []

if os.path.isdir('A:/'):
    paths.append('A:/')

if os.path.isdir('B:/'):
    paths.append('B:/')

...

That's a kludge, but it works OK. I'm sure WMI may have a function that 
returns mounted volumes, but under the circumstances currently, I can 
only use the standard Python library. Any ideas on how to do this better?

Thanks