Renaming removable disks.

[Cassanova]

I have a Thumb drive that I've had since before I got Fedora. I Therefore named it in Windblows... unfortunately it being the way it is, when I go to umount it, it's quite a pain to type "umount /media/THUMB\ DRIVE" (i know.... it's far easier to do this in the GUI, but the terminal is far more fun... and makes me feel smarter than I am) is there a way to rename it w/o reformatting it? I saw a post here but it involved a HDD; and I was Unsure if the same would apply to a flash drive, and REALLY don't wanna screw it up. On it, are all my files/presentations for school, so it needs to be able to work on both Linux and Windblows. If it helps, it's a Sandisk Cruiser Mini titanium (I swear by Sandisk), and right clicking on the icon says it's a "msdos" filesystem type. thanx in advance

[Deonis]

su
yum install gparted
unmount your flash disk
than gparted in terminal
than go partition>> label and change your label
after your need to unplug your flash drive and plug again

[Cassanova]

Originally Posted by Deonis

su
yum install gparted
unmount your flash disk
than gparted in terminal
than go partition>> label and change your label
after your need to unplug your flash drive and plug again

Just wanna be sure... that's going to keep my files intact right?

[PabloTwo]

I wouldn't trust any program that relabels a DOS partition to be non-destructive to the data on that partition without first testing it. Always assume guilty until proven innocent when it comes to your valued data.

What's wrong with copying the data on the thumb drive to your hard drive, then relabeling the thumb drive, by any one of several available methods, checking if the data on the thumb drive survived or not, and copying the data back to the thumb drive from the hdd if it did not?

Unfortunately, none of the documentation that comes with any of these programs tells you if re-labeling a DOS partition, or any other type, is destructive or not. One of the many little utility programs that comes with the 'mtools' rpm package is 'mlabel', made just for labeling/re-labeling DOS type partitions.

I haven't tried that one yet, but I will next time I want to relabel a vfat partiton, which I do with all of my vfat usb devices (mp3 player, SDmicro cards, thumb drives) so they mount with nice descriptive names. Is mlabel non-destructive? I don't know and the man page isn't saying. Everything else I've tried wipes the data on the partition clean.

[Deonis]

always good to back up a precious data !!!! Gparted does it pretty nicely without pain in "some places". Actually funny, Why nobody thought to put this option in Nautilus ?

[sidebrnz]

Don't bother; it doesn't work. Yes, you can change the label, either from gparted or a command line, but Linux will still use the same name for the drive. I know; I've been trying to get around this for months, in Fedora, Ubuntu and Puppy.

[Deonis]

usb before gparted :
ID_TYPE=disk
ID_INSTANCE=0:0
ID_BUS=usb
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=
usb after gparted:

ID_FS_LABEL=Denis
ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=Denis
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=Denis

only one thing which is not good is you cannot change label of usb disk with fat on it currently only ntfs supported.
and system will use a new label to mount your device !!!

[gthill]

Originally Posted by Cassanova

. unfortunately it being the way it is, when I go to umount it, it's quite a pain to type "umount /media/THUMB\ DRIVE" (i know.... it's far easier to do this in the GUI, but the terminal is far more fun... and makes me feel smarter than I am) is there a way to rename it w/o reformatting it?

Do you know about auto line completion with the tab key.
try this exercise
umo<tab><tab>
umount/me<tab><tab>
umount/media/T<tab><tab>
umount /media/THUMB\ DRIVE

saves a lot of typing