I just got a project where I have to do the following on a Windows OS:

detect how many drives (C: D: E:
..etc) are connected to current
system 
what the system labels are
for each volume 
how much storage
(both used and free) for each of the
drives
what format each drive is
(NTFS/FAT32) 
how many files are
in a given directory in any of those
drives 
how big each file size is
File processing (each file is
about 2GB) where I have to do a lot
of C-like fseek(), and binary data
parsing, and big to little-endian
conversion. Have to write some logic
code as well.

I'm an experienced C\C++ programmer, but I thought this would be a perfect time for me to start learning about scripting.
Candidates that I thought of are: ( Python || Ruby ) && PowerShell.
Are those the kinds of things I can accomplish with, say, IronPython+Powershell? Or are there better tools/languages out there? 
PS: Is PowerShell meant to replace VBScript? Also, what is VB.net good for anyway now that C#, WPF, and Powershell exist?
I'll give you the unpopular answer then since no one else has added it:  Perl.
If you're comfortable with the Win32 API as a C/C++ programmer, Perl may be the easier way to go.  It has modules for accessing the Win32 API and Perl is quite easy for C/C++ programmers to get up to speed in.  Perl has always done the job for me in the past.
Advice for Windows system scripting+programming