Rename External Hard Drive

**ElliottMarlow** · May 5th, 2008

Hi. I recently bought a Western Digital 250 GB external hard drive. When mounted, the name appears as "My Passport," but I want to rename it, mostly to get rid of the space between "My" and "Passport."

Right-click, rename doesn't work, nor does highlight, F2.
Is there a terminal command?

Thanks

**mlentink** · May 5th, 2008

Hmmm...
afaik you can only rename partitions when unmounted. So what I would try is to unmount the drive, fire up GParted and rename the partition.
But you could also connect it to a windows box and do it from there. But then you would need a windows box, and not everyone has that readily available...

forestpixie · May 5th, 2008

This worked for me renaming ext3

**Rocket2DMn** · May 5th, 2008

You can install the metapackage ntfsprogs then use ntfslabel to give a better label to the drive (say it's sdb1). Unmount it, then run

Code:

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs
sudo ntfslabel /dev/sdb1 usbdisk

where usbdisk is the new label for the hard drive (don't use a name with spaces)

**ElliottMarlow** · May 6th, 2008

I tried mounting in Windows, still no luck. It told me I didn't have permission. I'll give Gparted a shot though. Thanks

**lemonoid** · March 10th, 2013

i know this is old but I need to frankenstein it. i have the exact same issue i got a 1tb WD tonight named My Passport. I need no spaces, as the op said. I tried the suggestion to install ntfsprogs, unmount the device, and then ntfsprogs /dev/sdb1 usbdisk (or whatever you wanna name it too) but it said

Code:

 The device /dev/sdb1 doesn't exist

so then i tried to mount the external and try it and i got this

Code:

 Cannot make changes to a mounted device

has anoyne ever figured out how to change the name of an external such as this? or maybe anything i'm doing anything wrong in this situation

**fantab** · March 10th, 2013

I don't think you can change the Device name that easily. It is written in the firmware. However you can label and change labels of the partition. If your Disk has only one partition then unmount the disk and run:

Code:

$ sudo dosfslabel /dev/sdb1 drivelabel
(or whatever) if the drive is FAT

$ sudo e2label /dev/sdb1 drivelabel
if the drive is ext4.

Next time start your own thread, no need to dig up the dead.

**vanadium** · March 10th, 2013

It is all there in stock Ubuntu nowadays, with the "Disks" utility. Select the drive in the left pane, unmount with a button in the right pane, then click the gear button to select the command "Edit filesystem label".