PSProvider

PSProvider is another confusing concept from powershell. A PSProvider basically provides a way to browse and access items from a source. There's some builtin PSProviders like FileSystem, Registry on windows and so on.

You can check all available providers by:

$ Get-PSProvider

Name                 Capabilities                                                          Drives
----                 ------------                                                          ------
Registry             ShouldProcess                                                         {HKLM, HKCU}
Alias                ShouldProcess                                                         {Alias}
Environment          ShouldProcess                                                         {Env}
FileSystem           Filter, ShouldProcess, Credentials                                    {C, D, Temp}
Function             ShouldProcess                                                         {Function}
Variable             ShouldProcess                                                         {Variable}
Certificate          ShouldProcess                                                         {Cert}
WSMan                Credentials                                                           {WSMan}

PSDrive

Each PSProvider can have one or more PSDrive.

PSDrive is kind of like one of the entries of a PSProvider.

Check all available PSDrive by Get-PSDrive.