Renaming an External HD

[Schumach5]

Hello, total noob question here. I'm trying to name my USB HD "External HD," but everytime I do, it defaults to all caps "EXTERNAL HD." Very annoying to see on my desktop, just mocking me The same thing happens with my Windows partition HD. Why the all caps?? I've just gone along with it for all this time, but I finally want to take action. What am I doing wrong? Be gentle.

 

[SilentPanda]

Maybe you bought the hard drive from a Billy Mays infomercial?



What format is the hard drive?

 

[Mew2468]

FAT32 (and maybe NTFS, I forget) makes hard drive names in all uppercase letters. Your Windows Partition is FAT32 or NTFS as well, which is why it also renames itself to capital letters.

 

[Schumach5]

Whelp, there it is. It's a FAT32 format. Laame, so much for getting even with this thing. Oh well, thanks for the info!

@SilentPanda, I LOL'd!

 

[Mew2468]

Whelp, there it is. It's a FAT32 format. Laame, so much for getting even with this thing. Oh well, thanks for the info!

@SilentPanda, I LOL'd!

If you're only going to connect it to Macs, you can reformat it as a "Mac OS Extended" using Disk Utility.

 

[Schumach5]

I thought about reformatting it, but won't that wipe the drive clean? I do only use it on a Mac, but it's full of all my media and have no other place to store it. But I'm uninformed, could I do it without erasing everything?

 

[JediMeister]

Yes, changing the formatting from FAT32/NTFS to Mac OS or vice versa will result in erasing the information off the drive.