Score:3

Name USB devices to help identifying them

cn flag

When I connect USB devices such as mp3 player or bike computer, they mount right away but are given names like "46A1-4000" & "6132-6635"

When I have several devices connected it gets very confusing to know which is which, especially when they have inbuilt memory & removable SD. 3 or 4 drives show with random numbers & no way to easily know what is what.

I'd like a way to name these such as "sandisc2" or "igsport" - How can I do it?

Score:3
cn flag
Ray

Names such as "46A1-4000" are used when the file system doesn't have a volume label. So, you just have to give it a name.

If you don't want to reformat, what I would do is use the program gparted under sudo. Try the following:

  1. Insert the USB drive.
  2. Run sudo gparted.
  3. In the top-right corner, select the USB drive in question.
  4. Presumably, it has been mounted automatically for you. Right click on the partition and select "unmount".
  5. Right click again and select "Label File System". Then, enter the name.
  6. Then, apply the change by clicking on the white checkmark on the green background.

I think you can label the file system at the time that you formatted it. For example, look at the man pages for mke2fs by typing man mke2fs. This command, which is used to make ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems takes an -L option for the volume label.

If you used some GUI to format it (i.e., even gparted, then there will be another way to label it, as well.

My suggestion above is when you don't want to re-format the file system.

Hope this helps!

RiquezJP avatar
cn flag
I installed gParted & followed your instructions. The option "Label File system" is greyed out before & after unmounting the drive in question. I removed the SD card & inserted that directly into the computer & that also has Label greyed out. I had another blank SD card lying around & that also has the same result - "Label" option is greyed out.
RiquezJP avatar
cn flag
Ahh, lol. I inserted an SD into my mac, renamed it on the desktop to "SD16GB" & now that name shows in Linux. wow.
RiquezJP avatar
cn flag
It looks like gParted doesnt support Label with Fat32 which is what my mp3 player & other small devices use. But otherwise thank you for the answer, i think this app will be useful.
cn flag
Ray
@RiquezJP Thanks for the follow-ups! I wasn't aware that `gparted` can't handle FAT32 volume labeling. It's good to know! Indeed, you can use any program you want (even Windows) to label it and it should work.
Score:2
ch flag

Just to expand answer by @Ray, there is detailed instructions with explanations on how to do this for different cases and with different methods at Ubuntu Community Help Wiki:

RenameUSBDrive

Here is contents of this page to make an idea what it is about:

  1. Using the Partition Editor
  2. Using the Command line
    1. Identify your Partition
    2. Install the Labeling Program
    3. Unmount the Partition
    4. Changing the Label
  3. Filesystems
    1. FAT16 and FAT32
    2. NTFS
    3. ext2, ext3, and ext4
    4. JFS
    5. ReiserFS (v3)
    6. XFS
  4. Verify the Change
  5. Other Resources
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