how to change drive letter in linux

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Renaming a Hard Drive

I have a secondary internal HDD to store auxiliary data. I want to give it a better name. How do I do it?

• 1 I assume you want to change the label of the file system. If it's an ext file system you can use e2label <device> label or gparted if you want a GUI. –  Marco Oct 12, 2013 at 21:33
• I'd prefer to just do it with the command line. It's a FAT32 filesystem. –  Newb Oct 12, 2013 at 22:11
• Use dosfslabel <device> label . –  Marco Oct 12, 2013 at 22:18

For FAT16 and FAT32 partitions, use mlabel from the mtools package or dosfslabel

Method 1# using dosfslabel ( As @Macro suggested )

Umount Partition

Set Label using :

Method 2# using mtools

Install package using

unmount the external drive, Partitions generally need to be unmounted before you can fiddle with them, so unmount the partition of the device you want to change the label for:

where device name can be /dev/sdbx , you can find in sudo fdisk -l

Check the current label

Note that we're using the special "::" drive which allows us to specify the device descriptor on the command line; otherwise we'd have to edit ~/.mtoolsrc to assign a drive letter.

Change the label

Reference Link

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How to edit label of USB drive?

How to edit label of USB drive easily without formatting it? I tried right clicking the device and go to the properties but cannot find anything to edit.

• You did not specify if this USB drive is Linux only (ie. ext formatted). –  Rinzwind Sep 29, 2012 at 18:05
• Specify the file system. –  Zignd Sep 29, 2012 at 18:07
• See also: askubuntu.com/a/53469/3940 and askubuntu.com/a/49296/3940 –  Takkat Sep 29, 2012 at 19:17
• Possible duplicate of How to rename partitions? –  Dan Dascalescu Aug 10, 2016 at 4:50

6 Answers 6

From terminal.

You have to use the mlabel command.

First type the mount command to find out the device location of you pen drive. Find the line which goes like “/dev/sdc1 on /media/disk …”.

This means the device sdc1 which is my pen drive is mounted on /media/disk.

Next unmount the device.

sudo umount /media/disk

Next use this command.

sudo mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 ::<new_label>

If you get a message like:

Total number of sectors (7831520) not a multiple of sectors per track (63)! You can easily ignore the check by running this command:

echo mtools_skip_check=1 >> ~/.mtoolsrc

Try again and it should work.

• The name of the USB should have changed. Unplug and Plug the pen drive back in and it will be mounted with the new label name.

The GUI way

For this you need the Gparted software. Install it if you don’t have it already.

Open the software as a super user, and select the pen drive from GParted>Devices>

Unmount the device if it hasn’t been, by right clicking on it.

After unmounting, right click on it and select “Label” and change it to whatever you want it to be. And then Apply it, by clicking the Edit>Apply All Operations.

Your pendrives label should be changed now.

Original Source

• 1 I am using sudo mlabel -i /dev/sde1 ::<Namshum> but getting the error bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline' –  Namshum Sep 30, 2012 at 7:59
• 2 The GUI way works out as per the steps you mentioned. Thanks! –  Namshum Sep 30, 2012 at 8:27
• Note that if you are using the command line technique, you may need to enclose the mount point in quotes to unmount it, viz: sudo umount "/media/STORE N GO" –  K. P. MacGregor Apr 2, 2014 at 23:40
• 1 In my case, I had to add MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1 to the /etc/mtools.conf to get it working (~/.mtoolsrc din't exist). Good answer anyway. It works fine. –  cabreracanal May 8, 2014 at 14:30
• ~/.mtoolsrc doesn't work here since it goes to the users home directory. you have to edit /root/.mtoolsrc (or the config) –  relascope May 28, 2015 at 14:49

You got several options (some require installation). Out of these e2label should be the easiest.

Gparted can do this. Rightclick the device and choose label. Needs installation of gparted though.

There are several command line methods:

tune2fs - Adjust tunable filesystem parameters on ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystems

Example: sudo tune2fs -L {label} {devicename}

e2label - Change the label on an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem

Example: sudo e2label {device} {label}

There is also the Windows method:

mlabel - make an MSDOS volume label

Add a line in the /etc/mtools.conf file like this drive {letter}: file="{device}" . Example: drive p: file="/dev/sdb1". Note that the drive letter can be replaced by any letter that is not present in the mtools.conf file.

Example to set the label: sudo mlabel {letter}:{label}

• 1 What does it mean when the "Label" right-menu option is disabled in gparted ? –  Pointy Apr 18, 2014 at 23:10

As well as the other answers, the more ubiquitous tool dosfslabel is well suited to this task;

where /dev/sdd1 is the partition you wish to label.

I did a little research and I found this official tutorial from Ubuntu Documentation which will teach you step by step how to rename drives with different file systems ( FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, JFS, ReiserFS (v3) and XFS ).

The title is "RenameUSBDrive", but it is not only for USB drives, it covers a lot of file systems supported by Ubuntu.

Here is the link : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RenameUSBDrive

Gparted and Mlabel did not work on Ubuntu 18.04 renaming a FAT USB drive. However, you can use fatlabel instead :

Another GUI way if you're using Gnome.

run gnome-disks or search for "Disks" in the app search

Choose the device

choose the partition, click the gear icon

Modify the Display Name field

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RenameUSBDrive

Using the Partition Editor

Using the command line, identify your partition.

Install the Labeling Program

• sudo apt-get install mtools sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs sudo apt-get install e2fsprogs sudo apt-get install jfsutils sudo apt-get install reiserfsprogs sudo apt-get install xfsprogs

Unmount the Partition

• sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Changing the Label

Filesystems, fat16 and fat32, check the current label.

• sudo mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 -s ::

Change the label

• sudo mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 ::my_external
• drive p: file="/dev/sdb1" drive q: file="/dev/sdb2"
• sudo mlabel p:30GB_FAT32

Error message

• sudo ntfslabel /dev/sdb1
• sudo ntfslabel /dev/sdb1 my_external

ext2, ext3, and ext4

• sudo e2label /dev/sdb1
• sudo e2label /dev/sdb1 my_external
• sudo jfs_tune /dev/sdb1
• sudo jfs_tune -L my_external /dev/sdb1

ReiserFS (v3)

• sudo reiserfstune -l my_external /dev/sdb1
• xfs_admin -l /dev/sdb1
• xfs_admin -l my_external /dev/sdb1

Verify the Change

Other resources.

RenameUSBDrive (last edited 2013-12-14 11:20:15 by knome )

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