How do I rename a USB drive?

Question

How exactly would I rename a USB drive?

I've read that you can go into the Disk Utility, the click on Edit Partition and there is an option to rename the label but I can't click in the area to rename.

Is there any other way?

Answer 1

First, obtain the location of your USB drive:

sudo fdisk -l

Assuming that your device location is /dev/sdb1/:

You can safely check the current label without any side effects by issuing the following command:

sudo file /dev/sdb1 -s

Most USB sticks are formatted using FAT16/FAT32. To change the label via the prompt, use the mlabel command. The label of a FAT filesystem requires to be exactely 11 characters. No more, no less. When characters are omitted, spaces are added at the beginning, and seemingly random characters are appended at the end.

sudo mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 -s ::"LABEL HERE "

For other filesystems (rarely used for USB sticks), see this page.

Answer 2

Right click on the drive you want to edit to bring up the properties window. Then the name will be highlighted by default. Just type your name and click enter.