How can I change the volume name of a FAT32 filesystem?

Question

How can I change the volume name of a FAT32 filesystem? I know I can set the volume name when I format the partition with the -n option of mkfs.vfat. But how to just change the name without formatting?

I especially want to be able to use lower and uppercase letters. In worst case, I can use a Windows tool, but Windows by default transforms all letters to uppercase (but works fine with lowercase letters in volumes created with mkfs.vfat).

Related on [SU]: How to change the filesystem label on the vfat filesystem located on device /dev/sdb1? — Palec, Oct 12 '14 at 19:20

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' · Answer 1 · 2017-04-21T08:31:14.373

84

Dosfstools, which provides mkfs.vfat and friends, also provides fatlabel (called dosfslabel in older versions) to change the label.

edited Apr 21 '17 at 08:31

answered Jul 28 '12 at 00:39

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

829,060

I will try this in some days. Do you know if it can save lower-case letters? – Den Jul 30 '12 at 05:51
It didn't work whit lower case letters. And after use, I got errors on the file system.... – Den Sep 20 '12 at 02:48
dosfslabel changed from supporting lower-case labels as of version 3.0.12 to rejecting them in 3.0.16 – D McKeon Jan 09 '14 at 20:11
1

@DMcKeon: it seems to work in 3.0.27, with a warning. – Craig McQueen Feb 29 '16 at 03:51
blivet (at least, blivet3-data-3.1.3-3.el7) rejects lower-case labels for EFI partitions. dosfslabel (aka fatlabel, from dosfstools-3.0.20-10.el7) accepts them with a warning. So, blivet's being preemptively annoying. – stolenmoment Oct 09 '19 at 20:56

score 44 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 17 '17 at 19:42

44

For my USB drive mlabel did not work, but fatlabelworked!

fatlabel /dev/device

gives you label

fatlabel /dev/device NEW_LABEL

sets new label

answered Aug 17 '17 at 19:42

Grzegorz Wierzowiecki

14,264

1

Because we label a file system and usually it is on a partition here is my command: sudo fatlabel /dev/sdXN NewLabel (/dev/sdf1, for example) – Mikolasan Oct 29 '19 at 17:50

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 29 '18 at 03:00

The solution is to use mkdosfs (mkfs.vfat) : it lets the user specify the volume label using the -n flag, and lowercase letters are kept lowercase, but this tool recreates the filesystem, so all data will be lost.

The non-destructive solution below is a combination of the mlabel and dosfslabel command-line tools.

Connect the device to the computer if not already connected.

Open a terminal window.

Run blkid | grep ' TYPE="vfat"' and </proc/mounts grep ' vfat ' to figure out the name of the device (e.g. /dev/sdb1). Look around in /media etc. to confirm you have picked the right device. If unsure, unplug it, run the commands again, see it disappear, plug it back, and run the commands again.

Unmount the device by running umount /dev/sdb1 (substituting /dev/sdb1 with the name of the device found above). If it was mounted, and the unmount failed, then close some windows, kill some programs (e.g. fuser -m /dev/sdb1), and try unmounting again.

Run sudo env MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1 mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 ::x (substituting /dev/sdb1 with the name of the device found above). If the system can't find mlabel, then install it by running sudo apt-get install mtools , and try again.

Run sudo dosfslabel /dev/sdb1 MyLabel (substituting MyLabel with the desired label and /dev/sdb1 with the name of the device found above). Ignore any warnings about boot sector differences. If the system can't find dosfslabel, then install it by running sudo apt-get install dosfstools , and try again.

Run blkid | grep ' TYPE="vfat"', and examine its output to verify that the label has been changed properly. Optionally, unplug the device, and then plug it back in. The system will recognize it, and mount it under /media/MyLabel, without converting lowercase letters in the volume label to uppercase.

Please note that there is an 11 character limit on the length of a VFAT volume label. If you specify a longer label, it will be truncated. There is another restriction: the label can contain only (some) ASCII characters: accented letters etc. won't work.

Thanks for your long answer! Can you explain what the command in 5. is doing exactly? It sets the label to 'x'? — Den, Feb 23 '16 at 13:19

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 04 '23 at 13:21

4

Have a look at the Ubuntu page about renaming USB drives. It's basically:

mlabel -i <device> ::<label>

edited Jul 04 '23 at 13:21

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'

22,870

answered Jul 27 '12 at 03:02

Ulrich Dangel

25,369

Thanks! Change the name works, but it is transvormed to upercase:
mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 ::redsd

mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 -s ::

Volume label is REDSD
– Den Jul 27 '12 at 03:31
2

@Den FAT disk labels are uppercase only – Matteo Jul 27 '12 at 15:35
1

@Matteo I have here a HD whit FAT32 which have lower and upper case letters in the name: mlabel -vi /dev/sdb1 -s :: Volume label is miniTR – Den Jul 30 '12 at 05:50
2

@Den yes FAT32 supports it. It is most likely a FAT16 formatted drive. – Matteo Jul 30 '12 at 07:11
@Matteo Thanks for confirming I'm not completely silly ;-) The device I try to rename is a 15.9 GB FAT32 formated SD card. – Den Aug 17 '12 at 01:39

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 26 '17 at 15:04

2

The above commands didn't worked for me on Rasberry Pi / Rasbian Jessie 8. I decided to go with gparted.

Go to the Menu: Partition / Label. Write your desired name and then click on the green pipe (apply).

After the procedure you can see the details hided under the "multiple" + sign. There is a command total other:

 mlabel ::"LABEL_NAME" -i/dev/sda1

edited Jun 26 '17 at 15:04

Stephen Rauch

4,239

answered Jun 26 '17 at 14:38

user237794

21

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 04 '23 at 13:00

2

So far the only way I found to change a FAT volume name with lower case letters is to edit it with a hex editor (copy the first few sectors with dd to a temporary file, edit it and copy it back). It works well so far (even with FAT16) and neither fsck nor CHKDSK from Windows 7 complained. But no guarantee, of course ;-)

edited Jul 04 '23 at 13:00

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'

22,870

answered Sep 20 '12 at 02:47

Den

967

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 10 '18 at 16:33

1

For a GUI alternative, gparted has a Label File System menu item for many file systems, including VFAT. It becomes available after unmounting the file system.

answered Nov 10 '18 at 16:33

liori

630

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 13 '20 at 01:05

0

An update : Since now, the FAT32 file system has been superseded by the new exFAT for most flash devices, you my find that fatlabel do not work on many cards. you should the try exfatlabel instead of fatlabel

answered Oct 13 '20 at 01:05

Camion

274

score -1 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 01 '20 at 14:02

-1

Apologies for coming back to this 7 years later, but this is a top answer on google for the question, and I didn't have any of the tools suggested in the existing answers on the system I was using.

As a last resort,

if [ "`dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=1 count=7 skip=54 2>/dev/null`" = 'FAT16  ' ] ; then
  echo -n 'MYNEWLABEL1' | dd of=/dev/hda1 seek=43 count=11 bs=1 conv=notrunc
elif [ "`dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=1 count=7 skip=82 2>/dev/null`" = 'FAT32  ' ] ; then
  echo -n 'MYNEWLABEL1' | dd of=/dev/hda1 seek=71 count=11 bs=1 conv=notrunc
fi

ought to work.

answered Jul 01 '20 at 14:02

Whinger

1

1

Welcome to the site, and thank you for your contribution. May I recommend that you use the $( ... ) style for command substitutions insted of the backticks, as these are deprecated now. – AdminBee Jul 01 '20 at 15:15
1

This is an unwise last resort. It makes assumptions about the BPB and the rest of the volume that aren't necessarily, or even usually, true. For example, often the volume label is entries in the root directory. If you don't have the tools, the right thing to do is obtain them. fatlabel handles the various BPB and root directory possibilties – JdeBP Jul 02 '20 at 07:43
JdeBP: "even usually" "often". I'd dispute both.
I've personally never come across a volume label in the root directory, and the "assumptions" it makes about the BPB are defined. Finally, if it turns out the assumptions are incorrect and you do have some bizarrely formatted disk that doesn't conform to the standard, it should be non-destructive. I would say in the majority case this will be sufficient.

And telling someone to obtain tools, which may take hours of faffing with build environments just to label a disk is facile. If you have the tools, sure use them. If not, this should work.
– Whinger Jul 02 '20 at 08:28
1

Then you do not heave nearly enough experience with FAT. The volume label being directory entries has long been commonplace. This is not ¨bizarre" nor is it non-standard. Whereas in contrast this solution is unwise and has no guarantee of working at all, not least because the volume label in the root directory often gets precedence. – JdeBP Jul 02 '20 at 18:14
2

I wrote my first FAT disk parser for an 8-bit home micro 28 years ago. If you dislike the solution, why not modify it to include the things you believe it needs rather than just whining about how it wouldn't work (when it demonstrably does)? – Whinger Jul 04 '20 at 01:59

How can I change the volume name of a FAT32 filesystem?

9 Answers9

mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 ::redsd

mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 -s ::

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