Don't remember how to rename external drives

[DoYouKubuntu]

I posted earlier about the two 1TB drives I bought to replace identical ones, which are 6 years old. But I'm stumped.

They're working fine. I plugged them in to USB ports on my System76 laptop, after unplugging the old ones from the same ports. They weren't both immediately recognized, so I rebooted the laptop. Now they're both listed--and usable/writeable/deletable--in /media/[myname] as Transcend and Transcend1.

I had named the old ones /media/[myname]/Transcend_[blue][green]. I want to name the new ones Transcend_Blue and Transcend_Green. But can't. Even root can't. Root gets an error message about the resource being busy or in use.

Can someone refresh my memory on how to do this? If I 'safely remove' them...they're no longer there...so I can't do anything, like change their names... This wasn't that hard pre-sepsis...

[claydoh]

I normally give the partition of the drive a label, right click on the partition in Partition Manager and go to Properties. You'll need to unmount it first I believe, via the same right-click menu.
Then my removable stick shows up the way I want it to,

[DoYouKubuntu]

Thanks, @claydoh. I'll give that a try when I'm back at the laptop.

[oshunluvr]

Well, you can "label" the filesystems. Then when they mount they label is displayed in Dolphin.

[Don B. Cilly]

If they're EXT4 (3, whatever - not FAT) you can
sudo e2label /dev/sdxx Transcend_Blue

df -h will tell you what the xxs are.
They don't have to be unmounted.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Note: I still haven't tried anything. Maybe later today. But I just wanted to point something out that I thought about last night.

Whatever I did six years ago with the now-retired drives, it stuck! In other words, it didn't matter which USB port they were in; their names stayed with them. [My favorite cat likes to sleep on that laptop, and sometimes when she stretches, things get unplugged! And don't necessarily go back to their original port.]

[Don B. Cilly]

Yeah, once you label a partition, the label stays on - until you change it

Look, the "Devices" section of my Dolphin:

[DoYouKubuntu]

I just don't remember... well, I just don't remember! I really didn't think this had anything to do with partition software. They're just plug-and-play USB drives...

[Don B. Cilly]

Just what is the problem with
sudo e2label /dev/sdxx Transcend_Blue ?

I you don't want to use df to find out what partition they're mounted from, right-clicking on them in Dolphin will tell you. If they're mounted, Properties. Mounted from:
If they're not, Mount.

[claydoh]

I just don't remember... well, I just don't remember! I really didn't think this had anything to do with partition software. They're just plug-and-play USB drives...

Filesystem Labels are what do this, one way is by using partition software, which replaces the need to know how to do this on each of the different filesystems one may have.

[claydoh]

Just what is the problem with
sudo e2label /dev/sdxx Transcend_Blue ?

That is only valid for ext4 file systems.

[Don B. Cilly]

Yes, that one is.
But there's CLI tools to label just about anything. If we don't know what the disks are formatted to...

[claydoh]

If we don't know what the disks are formatted to...

Then we can use a gui partitioning or disk tool for the job as it knows how to do it on all filesystems?

[jlittle]

I would like to do this to an external drive, which has several partitions on it.

I don't want to label, or relabel the partitions.

I want to change the name that appears in the "Devices" panel in the KDE Partition Manager.

I think that for my drive, the name I want to change, "Expansion", which shows as "iProduct" (not "idProduct") in lsusb output, can't be changed without flashing the firmware. Conceivable, but likely difficult, might brick the device, and certainly inadvisable.

But, I did find some references for some drives to hidden .inf files on the drive. (Mine has a hidden drive called "Seagate", but nothing with the name I want to change.) Conceivably the OP edited such a .inf file.

There is also a horrible hack to fake the name in udev as the device is being initialized. Some people have to resort to this sort of thing to get the right driver to be used. Again, difficult, and inadvisable.