How to change name of external USB drives?

thewul · September 9, 2018, 9:14am

When connecting a specific USB drive to (in this case) VM, they are all listed was
Western Digital My Book …

I would like to have the TB size added or the last 4 digits be replaced by e.g. 2TB, 4TB
In Windows they have labels like MyBook4TB, but those labels are useful for Windows Explorer only.

Any suggestions?

Logan.S · September 15, 2018, 9:40pm

If you have a My Book (+ WD SmartWare) external drive with a label display on it, WD SmartWare 1.6.X will add a Label section to the Drive Settings. From there, you can change the label, or change the look of the label by inverting it.

I Writing here some step, might be it can help.
To change the label name on the drive (the part located above the capacity listing)…

Click on the Settings tab in WD SmartWare.
Click on Set Up Drive .
Click on the Label button on the left.
Under Set Label , type in the label name you want on the drive.
Click on Save Label Name .

You can also follow the WD support website-
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3826

thewul · September 16, 2018, 8:33am

Thank you very much for getting back on this.
However, I am sorry to say, regretfully that is not the solution. It changes the label how it is seen by Windows. I have done that using Explorer drive properties, so the name shows up as My Book 4TB (for instance).
The name used in the above screenshot (Western Digital My Book 1230) probably is defined in the firmware (as “USB Friendly Name”) and I am afraid that can not be changed by the user.

BTW - I am aware of the Smartware ‘solution’, however, version 1.6 does not exist anymore and the latest version of Smartware does not have kind ‘settings’ anymore.

Feel WD should provide a tool allowing users to change the USB Friendly Name, if you have multiple My Books, you don’t see the differences.

mike27oct · September 16, 2018, 6:25pm

Changing name of drives is a Windows task, so google how to do this.

thewul · September 17, 2018, 4:26am

We are probably talking about two different things. The so-called “Friendly name” (WD showing the drive model) and the ‘Label’ which can indeed be changed.

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