What does volume label mean? What is a volume label? Using the Command Line

A volume label is a special configuration used to create hard disk volumes. Changing it is not recommended because you may lose some user files.

Instructions

Open the Start menu and launch the Run software utility. In the small window that appears, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter. The Hard Disk Management Setup Utility will appear. If you are unable to start it this way, use the “Administration” menu item in the computer control panel. In the window that appears, select the “Disk Management” menu item on the left.

View all available storage devices. View the volume labels (letters) assigned to the storage media. If you need to change it, right-click on the disk device and select "Change drive letter or drive path."

Please note that if there is an operating system and Program Files on it, there is a huge possibility of losing all user data and further reinstalling Windows. If this is an ordinary disk on which files are stored that are not related to installed programs or the operating system, then the maximum you risk is losing the path to the data, possibly registered by this or that program.

If you want to change the volume label of a removable drive, for example, a phone memory card, change this option in the same menu, but it is best to back up the data to a local computer drive, since complete or partial loss of it is possible. When changing the map volume label, keep in mind that in the future it may become unreadable on your mobile device, and some data may not be able to be used for certain purposes.

If this happens, format the renamed removable media from Safe Mode. Then format it using your mobile device, and only then start using the card as usual. When changing the volume label of a removable hard drive, check whether it contains torrent files, as you may lose the seed.

Users often think about which file system is best to format a flash drive. Usually they choose the system that they like best, however, there are still a few tips. Fat32 It works faster, but such a drive cannot accommodate a file larger than 4 GB. If you use the drive to store small files and documents, it would be better NTFS. In case of storing large files, such as videos or images, it is better to use exFAT. Experiments have shown that in these cases such file systems cope best.

As an exception, it can be noted that some equipment requires drives with a certain system; in this case, you will still have to format it to meet these requirements. Typically, older or specialized equipment requires fat32, while others can use file systems at the discretion of the manufacturer.

Do I need to format a new flash drive?

There is usually no need to format a new drive. All of them now work right out of the box, you just need to unpack and connect to your computer. However, formatting will also not do any harm, because there is no information on the flash drive and nothing will be damaged. The user just needs to check which file system is on the flash drive at the moment. It often happens that this is fat32, which means that it will not be possible to record large files. If this situation does not suit you, then you should re-encode the flash drive while there is no information on it.

Volume label for disk when formatting ntfs

Volume label made easy drive name. It will be visible when you connect the drive to your computer. It’s worth changing the standard name of the flash drive so that you can immediately find yours and not get confused among many identical ones. Typically, media are named by manufacturer and model number, however, nothing prevents the user from coming up with something of his own.

To change the label, the easiest way is to go into your computer, right-click on the flash drive and select rename. After this, you can enter the device name. However, lowercase will not be available here, so the user may not like it.

You can also set the device name in formatting process, indicating the name in the corresponding item indicated in the picture, after which the device will be renamed.

There is still an opportunity to use autorun file. To do this, you will need to create a text file in the root of the disk with the name autorun and save it with the extension .inf. In the file itself you should write Label =Flash drive name.

Many users block autorun because various malicious programs like to be registered there, so this method is not so reliable.

Do not forget about the restrictions that are imposed depending on the file system; if the requirements are not met, you may receive an error - “Invalid volume label specified.” For NTFS:

Name no more than 32 characters
No tab
Uppercase and lowercase characters.

For FAT

No more than 11 characters
No tab
Uppercase characters only

Formatting a flash drive to NTFS

This section will directly tell you how to format the drive into the desired file system.

The easiest way

In this case, the built-in Windows utility will be used. You should go into your computer, right-click on the flash drive and select “ Format».

Required here choosentfs and here you need to specify the device name. Cluster size can be left standard. In general, a cluster is the minimum amount of space that can be allocated for a file. If you plan to carry a lot of small files, then you should choose a smaller size, and if large, then a larger one. However, in most cases, the standard cluster suits the majority. Followed by uncheck with quick formatting, if necessary, so that the data cannot be recovered. Then all that remains is to wait for the process to complete.

Using the Command Line

For formatting you should use operatorformat. The user will need to open the command line and enter the same command as in the picture, replacing E with the letter of his flash drive.

The format operator is written as FORMAT volume

Options:

volume– letter of the drive to be formatted.
/FS:filesystem– FAT, FAT32, NTFS, or UDF is specified here.
/V:label— Volume label.
/Q- Quick formatting. When using it, there is no need for the /p parameter.
/C— for NTFS, compression of all data on the new volume.
/X– If there is a need to disable all access to the drive, then you should enter this parameter.
/R:edition- only for UDF.
/D- UDF only.
/A:size— Replaces the default cluster size, discussed above.

Formatting via Disk Management

You can right-click on the computer and select Manage, then go to disk management. Here you should select a flash drive, also right-click on it and select Format, after which all that remains is to configure everything and wait for the process to complete.

Using the diskpart utility

You can also use another command that is available on the command line. Enter one by one:

Using USB Disk Storage Format Tool

To get started, you should download and run the program. IN fieldDevice You will need to select the desired flash drive, and then specify its name and cluster. Then all you have to do is press start and wait for formatting to finish. If you need quick formatting, you should check this box; the program is slightly different from the standard one.

Convert flash drive to NTFS

You don't have to completely erase the media, but simply convert it from one file system to another. To do this, launch the command line and enter the operator convert h: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity /x, replace h with the drive letter.
There must be free space on the flash drive to complete the process, otherwise you may receive an error message. Also, just in case, you should copy all the data.

Let's imagine a situation where you purchased a system unit or a laptop secondhand and after starting the system you discover that the disks are named with some phrases. In other words, the volume label of the partition has been changed, and anything can be entered there. As an example, here is a screenshot.

How to change the volume label on a partition?

I will not describe the meaning of this concept, because everything is clear. In Windows 10, I will show you how to change the volume label of any partition. Moreover, having administrator rights, everything can be done in a few seconds.

So, open the “Computer” folder and click on any partition that you need to rename. Right-click on it and click on the item "Rename".

A message will appear that you need to have administrator rights, but since we have them, click "Continue".

That's all.

How to change the volume label in Disk Management

You can also change the volume label using another method. To do this, right-click on the Start menu and click on the item "Disk Management".

Select the desired experimental section, right-click on it, and then "Properties".

There will be an input box at the top where you can enter whatever you want. Just don't forget to click "Apply".

In fact, you can go to the disk properties from the “Computer” folder.

The volume label is the descriptive name of the volume to which the drive letter is assigned. Its size cannot exceed 11 characters (including spaces) and is displayed when the disk is accessed by various utilities such as Windows Explorer. You can change or delete a volume label with the LABEL command.

The syntax for changing the volume label is: label disk: label

where drive: is the drive letter followed by a colon, and label is the assigned description.

Expanding disk partitions using Diskpart

If the partition you created is too small, sometimes you have to expand it. Previously, you could expand partitions using third-party utilities. DiskPart currently allows you to extend existing partitions like this: When you need to extend the last partition of a disk, you can do so using the EXTEND command. The last partition is the only one that can be expanded regardless of whether it is a primary, secondary, or logical drive. But you cannot expand the boot or system partitions; in addition, only NTFS partition expansion is supported.

Diskpart command disk expansion example

To expand the last disk partition, follow these steps:

Launch DiskPart by entering diskpart at the command prompt.
List the disks with the list disk command and check for unallocated space.
Select the desired disk, for example disk 2, by entering select disk 2.
List the partitions of the selected disk by entering list partition.
Select the last section in the list. For example, enter select partition 6.
Extend the partition with the command extend size=JV, where N is the size of the added space in MB, for example:

DISKPART> extend size=1000

Before this, for the second time I encountered the problem of copying heavy files to a flash drive. It was necessary to upload one file of 7.28 GB in size to a flash drive; there were 2 flash drives available - 8 and 16 GB, respectively. The first one is completely empty, the second one has one movie about 750 MB in size. Remembering that by default they both (as well as most flash drives) have the FAT32 file system, the main limitation of which is the inability to upload files larger than 4 GB, the question arose bluntly of “how to reformat them to NTFS, which does not have such a limitation ( and it is advisable to do this using basic methods)." Having rummaged through Google, I found one interesting and useful article, the text of which will be given below. I want to say right away that I only used the first method, and it helped me, I didn’t try the others. If anyone needs it, take it and use it, you’re welcome :)

Is it possible to format a flash drive in NTFS? As you know, the reliability and fault tolerance of the NTFS file system is beyond praise (see How to convert a file system to NTFS without losing data?). The same can be said about the popularity of flash drives (see How to extend the life of a flash drive?). But that's not what we're talking about. The problem is that by default, using standard operating system tools, you can format a flash drive either into the FAT or FAT32 file system (but not into NTFS!). Such well-known programs designed for formatting/converting disk devices, such as PartitionMagic from PowerQuest Corporation, cannot help here either. There are several ways to solve this problem. 1. Click Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System; - in the System Properties dialog box that opens, open the Hardware -> Device Manager tab; - in the Device Manager dialog box, expand Disk devices, double-click to open the properties window of your flash drive; - open the Policy tab, select the Optimize for execution -> OK switch; - close the Device Manager and System Properties dialog boxes; - open My Computer, right-click the flash drive icon; - from the context menu that opens, select Format...; - in the Removable Disk Format dialog box, the NTFS option has appeared in the File system drop-down list (instead of FAT); - format the flash drive to NTFS; - select the Optimize switch for quick removal: My Computer -> Properties -> System Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> Disk Devices -><Съемный диск>-> Properties -> Policy. 2. You can do it even easier by using the built-in file system conversion utility convert.exe (File System Conversion Utility - C:\WINDOWS\system32\convert.exe): - start the command interpreter: click Start -> Run... -> Run the program - > cmd -> OK; - switch (if necessary) the keyboard layout to EN; - after the system prompt C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>enter convert<буква_флешки>: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity /x (for example, for a flash drive H: you need to enter convert h: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity /x); - click; - after the conversion is complete, enter exit (or simply close the command interpreter window). This utility allows you to convert the file system of a flash drive without losing data. Notes 1. Although the convert.exe utility allows you to convert the file system of a flash drive without losing data, it is recommended that you copy all the data on the flash drive to your computer’s hard drive before converting! 2. There must be free space on the flash drive to convert the file system. Otherwise, you will receive an error message such as: "...Estimating disk space required for file system conversion... Total disk space: 1023712 KB Free: 14328 KB Needed for conversion: 15486 KB Insufficient disk space for conversion Conversion failed H: was not converted to NTFS" In this case, free up the required space on the flash drive by deleting unnecessary files (or copy some of the files to your PC’s hard drive). 3. If the flash drive/removable disk has a Volume Label (for example, Transcend or My flash drive), when you try to convert, the message Enter the volume label for the disk will appear<буква_флешки> : In this case, enter the label of your flash drive (otherwise you will not be able to convert the flash drive: the message Invalid disk label specified will appear) or remove the label before converting (in the Flash Drive Properties dialog box). 3. You can use the free HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. Download and extract the HPUSBFW.zip file. Connect the flash drive to a free USB port. - Copy all the data on the flash drive to your computer’s hard drive; - run the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool utility (HPUSBFW.EXE file); - if several USB devices are connected, in the Device drop-down list, select the one you need (the flash drive you want to format); - in the File system drop-down list, select NTFS (or, if necessary, FAT/FAT32); - if you want, set a label in the Volume label text field (optional); - to speed up the process, check the Quick Format box; - press the Start button; - the HPUSBFW dialog box will appear with a warning (in English) that all data on the flash drive will be destroyed. Click Yes; - wait until the conversion process is completed; - in the dialog box that appears (with the conversion results), click OK. Notes 1. Be careful when choosing a device to format so that you do not accidentally format the wrong removable drive. 2. Before formatting, be sure to copy all the data on the flash drive to your computer’s hard drive! 3. It is not recommended to format a USB flash drive to NTFS if you are using it as a boot device. 4. It is not recommended to format a flash drive in NTFS if you are using one that is hopelessly outdated! - Windows 98. 5. Formatting a flash drive in NTFS not only allows you to forget about such a scourge of FAT/FAT32 as lost clusters, but also increases the reliability and durability of flash drives, and also allows you to slightly increase the speed of reading/writing data. 6. Convert utility keys (Converting the file system of a FAT volume to NTFS): CONVERT volume: /FS:NTFS. volume - Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name. . /FS:NTFS - Target file system: NTFS. . /V - Enable message output mode. . /CVTAREA:filename - Specifies a contiguous file in the root folder to reserve space for NTFS system files. . /NoSecurity - Security settings for converted files and folders will be available for everyone to change. . /X - Force removal of this volume (if it was mounted). All open handles to this volume will become invalid.

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