Despite the development of cloud services, the flash drive is still a popular way to transfer information between different PCs. To avoid using a removable drive with an impersonal default numbering, it is best to rename it. If you are connected to someone else’s computer, this will help the other user to navigate faster. Our experts tell you how to perform this operation in Windows.
Context menu
The context menu opens several opportunities to change the name of the flash drive.
Start Windows Explorer to see all connected hard drives and removable drives. Right-click on the area which shows the contents of the flash drive, opening the context menu of the file manager. In the screenshot the lines where you can modify the drive’s name are highlighted in green.
The “Rename” item opens an editing area directly in Explorer. Type a new name in the field indicated by the arrow. To write it down, press Enter on the keyboard or click outside the editing area.
The Properties item opens the removable drive control panel. On the “General” tab, change the name in the field highlighted by a green marker. Press “Apply” to write a new name.
The “Format device” item opens a corresponding system utility. Specify the label of the volume in the field highlighted by a marker. Press the button with the double mark. The information on the flash drive will be erased and the label will change to the one you specified before the operation.
When choosing a name and its length file system plays an important role. FAT and its advanced version exFAT use the naming system 8.3. This means that the name must be no longer than 11 characters including spaces. In FAT, any name will be shown in capital letters only. There is also a limit of 256 characters for NTFS. Here you can name the drive however you like, as long as it is readable in Explorer.
Disk Management
The system’s Disk Management Utility allows you to work with the drives even if they are not displayed in the File Manager.
Invoke the Start advanced menu by pressing Win+X. Select the item marked with a frame in the screenshot.
In the Disk Management Utility window, find your flash drive. Right-click on its icon to expand the list of available actions. The items highlighted with a green marker are similar to those in the Explorer menu. The line marked with “4” allows you to give the removable drive a fixed letter.
In the additional settings window, select the current drive letter. Click on the “Change” button.
In the area indicated by an arrow expand the vertical list of Latin letters. Skip “A” and “B” assigned to the disk drives. Letters “C” and “D” are usually occupied by hard drives. A few more can be skipped, depending on whether you have more than one CD or DVD-ROM on your computer. Our experts have chosen the “K” for the example, which looks in harmony with the drive’s name. Click on “OK” to finish the settings.
Agree with the system warning.
Having opened Explorer, we see that besides the name “KING” now flush drive has a letter designation, which is not going in order with the name of the connected drives.
Autorun file
The latter feature allows you to not only rename the removable drive, but also give it a personality by assigning a unique image.
You can find an icon for the USB stick on the internet, for example on the Iconspedia website. Icon files should have an ICO extension. After placing it in the root of the drive, open the editor Notepad. Copy the text placed below into it or type it yourself as shown in the screenshot. In the “Icon” line, after the “equal” sign indicate the full name of the icon with the extension. Type in the name of the flash drive you want, by analogy, in the “Label” line.
[Autorun]
Icon=Red.ico
Label=Red Kingstone
Save the result to the root of the drive named “autorun.inf”.
Change their visibility attributes to avoid accidental deletion of icons or startup files. Right-click to open the context menu of Explorer. Select the last item in it, marked in the screenshot by a double.
Check “hidden” box in Explorer properties window. Save the changes and repeat for the second file.
Having completed the preparatory operations we reconnect the drive to the PC. When you open Explorer, you will see that the device now has its own icon and is called as it is written in the AutoPlay file.
In conclusion
In this article our experts told you how to rename USB flash drive in Windows.
