Labeling A Drive

[Georgetoon]

I'm running PCLinuxOS KDE4 and have three SATA drives plugged into an Icy dock.  The first is running PCLinuxOS.  No issue or question there.

However, the two storage drives come up as "NTFS" and "VFAT."  The NTFS drive has WinXP on it.  This is merely for an emergency need for the accounting package I need for the family business.  I run WinXP in Virtualbox and it's amazing! 

The second drive is a Fat32 drive for files.

I'd like to label these drives so I know what I'm looking at.  I'd also like to lable the drives on the eSATA drive I have. I have two partitions there.  One is Fat32 and the other is EXT3.

Is there a way to label all these drives so when my system boots I can see what each drive is?  I'd like to give them common names like "Large Storage Drive", "Windows", "eSATA Fat32 Drive", etc.

[Was_Just19]

First I recommend that all names used are either one word or use underscore between words to attempt to keep compatibility.

It is not the "drives" that will be named, but the partitions, So if a drive has several partitions each will have a LABEL.

ext partitions can be labelled using

e2label  <device>  <name>

Also check out
ntfslabel

man:ntfslabel
man:e3label

typed into the Konqueror location bar will give the manual for each.

regards.

EDIT
            For VFAT partitions you might look at   mkfs.vfat  -n   <label>  option .........  I have never used this .....

Alternatively using Qparted you may be able to set the labels of the partitions ........

.

[YouCanToo]

I do believe that you can do the same thing by going into PCC and choosing "Local Disks" and than selecting "Manage Disk Partitions"  than in the bottom right corner select "Toggle to Expert Mode"  Click on the partition that you want to add the label to. On the right hand side you will find a button "Label"   Just follow the instructions on screen.

[Was_Just19]

I do believe that you can do the same thing by going into PCC and choosing "Local Disks" and than selecting "Manage Disk Partitions"  than in the bottom right corner select "Toggle to Expert Mode"  Click on the partition that you want to add the label to. On the right hand side you will find a button "Label"   Just follow the instructions on screen.

I have never been able to apply a Label to a partition using this method without completely formatting the partition at the same time.
Without formatting the Label has never been written for me.

Maybe it is a problem with my install, so I would be interested to hear if it works for others without formatting the partition.

..... over to you ......   

[Bald Brick]

I do believe that you can do the same thing by going into PCC and choosing "Local Disks" and than selecting "Manage Disk Partitions"  than in the bottom right corner select "Toggle to Expert Mode"  Click on the partition that you want to add the label to. On the right hand side you will find a button "Label"   Just follow the instructions on screen.

I have never been able to apply a Label to a partition using this method without completely formatting the partition at the same time.
Without formatting the Label has never been written for me.

Maybe it is a problem with my install, so I would be interested to hear if it works for others without formatting the partition.

..... over to you ......  

It works for me, but for the system to recognize the label I have to reboot. At any rate restarting the haldaemon is not enough.

Also note that I've never tried to label a mounted partition.

[Was_Just19]

It works for me, but for the system to recognize the label I have to reboot. At least restarting the haldaemon is not enough.

Also note that I've never tried to label a mounted partition.

Thank you  .....  it has been a while since I tried this, and yes indeed it works here for me now.
I haven't done anything I did not do previously, so whatever was the problem it seems it was only with my install and has been corrected.

Thanks for forcing me to try this again and showing me it can be done.

regards.   

[Georgetoon]

So, do I need to unmount the drive before labeling?

[Was_Just19]

So, do I need to unmount the drive before labeling?

I used a USB drive and I was able to change the Label with the drive mounted or unmounted.

Either way, the new Label only showed after I Safely Removed the device and plugged it in again.
So for internal drives a reboot would be needed for the new Label to register I would suggest.

regards.

[sammy2fish]

There are several variables here...

I dual-boot between windows & PCLinuxOS.  PCLOS is quite good on picking up the labels/names you give to the partitions in windows... (presuming that windoze was installed first).

As mentioned, use underscores or hyphens in the name in windows, and no re-naming in Linux will be required.

After that, it's just a matter of setting up permissions.  Many here, I'm sure can help you with that, if needed...

[Georgetoon]

Thanks, guys. Labels option is not coming up for the partitions/drives i'd like to label...not sure why.  I'll continue to investigate.

[Archie]

Have you tried Dolphin with the mounted partitions then right clicking on the partition you want to label and selecting edit?

[Georgetoon]

Have you tried Dolphin with the mounted partitions then right clicking on the partition you want to label and selecting edit?

I tried this just now in root. I got the following message:

"Could not start process Cannot talk to klauncher: The name org.kde.klauncher was not provided by any .service files."

[Was_Just19]

Thanks, guys. Labels option is not coming up for the partitions/drives i'd like to label...not sure why.  I'll continue to investigate.

In PCC - Local Disks - Manage Disk Partitions  ........  be sure to select 
Toggle to Expert Mode

and when finished in there select
Done

[Georgetoon]

Thanks, guys. Labels option is not coming up for the partitions/drives i'd like to label...not sure why.  I'll continue to investigate.

In PCC - Local Disks - Manage Disk Partitions  ........  be sure to select 
Toggle to Expert Mode

and when finished in there select
Done

Yes. i toggled expert mode. I'm only getting the label optionfor the local drive that PCLinux resids on.  the other two SATA drives are not giving me this opton.

Or, I simply do not understand how the disks and partitions are formatted. 

It's not  big deal. I know where everything is. it'd just be nice to have a more familiar label.

[pirate]

The easiest way for me to add labels is with Gparted. unmound then add label..do from live cd or different install