Volume label

Do exists a way to detect a volume label of a disk?
I've found the way to do this using WMI (System.Management) or winapi functi
on. The second solution is principal non-portable in future, the first one r
equire service WMI to work on client (for sure it's not a guarantee to be al
lways running). I do not want to include in my application logic, that will 
attempt to start that service before determining logical drive volume label.

If no way to read volume label - I'll try a combination of both methods, but
 the most question is why is this so? Does other platforms (not MS) do not o
perate (at informative level) with volume label?

Thanks
Dmitry Klymenko