How to Rename External Hard Drive [Four Ways Included]?

How to rename external hard drive without data loss?

I have an 500GB WD external hard drive connected to my Windows 10 PC and I plan to take it as a backup device for important data. Thus, I want to rename it as backup, so that I can recognized it easier. I know that I can change its volume label during formatting. But I don’t want to lose the data stored on it. Is there a way to change volume label without formatting? If is, how to rename external hard drive partition without formatting?

Four effective ways to rename external hard drive in Windows

Volume label is an optional name that assigned to a drive and you can label a drive to find out the drive more effectively. Actually, you can easily change the volume label for your external hard drive partition in Windows 10/8.1/8/7. Here are listed four methods on how to rename external hard drive safely and quickly. You can pick up one based on your preference.

▶ Rename external hard drive in File Explorer
▶ Change volume label for external hard drive in Disk Management
▶ Rename external hard drive using CMD
▶ Change volume label on external hard dive via third party freeware

Method 1. Rename external hard drive partition in File Explorer

Firstly, double click This PC in Windows 10 to open Windows Explorer. If you are running Windows 7, double click My Computer. Then, you can follow the steps given below:

1. Locate the partition on the external hard drive that you want to rename, right-click it and choose “Rename”.

2. In the pop-up window, you can type the label that you want to give to the drive and click Enter. Here I input “backup”.

Method 2. Change label for external hard drive in Disk Management

Press Windows + X and choose Disk Management in Windows 10 to open Disk Management. Then, do as the following steps:

1. Right-click the drive that you need to rename and choose “Properties”

2. Here you can type the name that you want to add to your external drive.

3. Then click “OK”.

Method 3. Rename external hard drive using CMD

First of all, type “cmd” in the Search box, right click the program and choose “Run as administrator”.

Then, type “label e: backup” in the pop-up window and click Enter to change the label for the drive.

Notes:

• “e” refers to the drive letter assigned to the external hard drive partition that you want to rename.

• You can replace “backup” with the label that you want to give to the partition on the external hard drive.

Method 4. Change the name of external hard dive via third party freeware

You can also turn to third-party partition freeware for Windows PCs, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to change the label of a partition without reformatting. It can work with Windows 10/8.1/8/7, XP, and Vista. Free download it and follow the listed steps.

1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. In the main interface, right-click the external hard drive partition whose name needs changing and choose Advanced > Change Label.

2. In the small pop-up window, enter a new label in the Input Box field and click OK.

3. You’ll be the main interface where you can preview the operation result. Click Apply and Proceed to commit it.

Notes:

• For FAT/FAT32 partition, the label can be set up to 11 characters; for NTFS partition, it is up to 32 characters.

• If you change the label for system partition (Usually it is C: drive), operations need to enter in reboot mode to complete.

Wrap things up

Now, surely you have realized how to rename external hard drive without formatting and data loss in Windows 10/8.1/8/7.

In fact, apart from changing label for a drive, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard allows you to clone external hard drive, format large partition to FAT32, convert NTFS into FAT32 for external hard drive, etc. If you upgrade to its Professional version, you can enjoy more functions, such as migrating OS to GPT disk, converting system disk from MBR into GPT without data loss and so on.