How do I change the name of a hard drive?

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CindyBrady
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How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by CindyBrady »

When I click on "Computer", I get a list of hard drives and SSDs. The drive I want to change the name of is called "WDC WD6002FZWX" and so on - long name. I want to call it "Main Hard Drive". How do I change it? (This hard drive is data only - nothing to do with the operating system. My operating system has it's own separate SSD.) I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon Sylvia 18.3.

Many thanks; and thank you for answering my two previous questions (which have nothing to do with this question).

~Cindy! :)
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Cosmo.
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by Cosmo. »

On this place you see always the hard coded name given by the manufacturer; you cannot change it.
CindyBrady
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by CindyBrady »

You could change the names in Windows to anything you wanted. I am sure you can do the same in Linux. ~Cindy! :)
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cool
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by cool »

You could change partition labels with gparted. Right-click the partition you want to change and choose Label.
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Cosmo.
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by Cosmo. »

The labels will be added on this place, but you cannot replace the hard coded names with them.
Hoser Rob
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by Hoser Rob »

CindyBrady wrote: Thu Feb 22, 2018 5:35 pm... I am sure you can do the same in Linux. ~Cindy! :)
Linux isn't Windows and you can never assume that.
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Termy
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by Termy »

Not sure via the GUI, but via the terminal, to label a file system (you don't label drives), you can do this in a couple of ways, depending on the file system. For example:

EXT2, EXT3, EXT4

Code: Select all

e2label DEV LABEL
Where DEV is the block device name, such as /dev/sda1, and where LABEL is the new label new to choose. Surround the LABEL in quotes if it has spaces or special characters.

NTFS

Code: Select all

ntfslabel DEV LABEL
The usage for this is as above.

EXFAT

Code: Select all

exfatlabel DEV LABEL
The usage for this is as above.

I imagine Disks (package gnome-disk-utility, command gnome-disks) can do this as well, which is a GUI application. Or, as mentioned, gparted.
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by altair4 »

I think we are talking about two different things here. "WDC WD6002FZWX" isn't a partition label it's a drive - and in this case I mean drive - id.

Like what you would find by running:

Code: Select all

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep sd[a-z]$
EDIT: My opinion - not that anyone has asked for it - if to right click an empty space on the desktop > Desktop Settings > slide the "Computer" icon to off. Then the issue will go away.

If the disk has a partition and you haven't defined it in fstab it will show up on the side panel of nemo. If you don't like the label of the partition itself then use Termy's very detailed post.
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shawnhcorey
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by shawnhcorey »

Neither Windows nor Linux nor any OS can change the name of a device; the name is hard-coded in its firmware. What they do is change the label of the partitions. If there's no label, then Windows displays the volume name, like C:, and Linux displays the device name.

There are a number of ways to change the labels, depending on where you want to use a GUI or CLI. All partition-management software will allow you to change the labels and IIRC, there is some that only change the labels.

You can only change the labels if you have root (admin) privileges. When you start the software, it will ask for your password to grant you these privileges.
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Re: How do I change the name of a hard drive?

Post by MintBean »

So to summarise, you can change the name of a disc mount ('the name of the disc' in common parlance), but not how it appears in 'Computer.' I wouldn't worry about the latter - I personally never use it and it's on the cards to either be revamped or completely removed according to the Mint development roadmap.
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