LinuxQuestions.org - Permanently labeling an external USB storage drive

First of all, you should have /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 instead of /dev/sda & /dev/sdb.

What are the filesystems on each drive. I have used the mlabel program to label FAT partitions. For example, I have an SD card labeled "podcasts". Inserting it, it is automounted as /media/PODCASTS. You could also create an entry in /etc/fstab using "LABEL=<Label Name>", e.g. "LABEL=PODCASTS" instead of /dev/sdb1.

You can also use the UUID number of the filesystem in place of the device entry in /etc/fstab.

One of the commands that is handy in looking up the label or UUID of a partition is the "udevinfo" command

Code:

udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sdb1

ID_VENDOR=SanDisk

ID_MODEL=Cruzer_Mini

ID_REVISION=0.1

ID_SERIAL=SanDisk_Cruzer_Mini_200517395007FC20132F

ID_TYPE=disk

ID_BUS=usb

ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:02.1-usb-0:1.2:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0

ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem

ID_FS_TYPE=vfat

ID_FS_VERSION=FAT16

ID_FS_UUID=3B69-1AFD

[/b]ID_FS_LABEL=CRUZERMINI2[/b]

ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=CRUZERMINI2

Install the "mtools" package if you have it. This package supplies the "mlabel" package. Add the following line to
/etc/mtools.conf:
drive p: file="/dev/sdb1". The p: device name is arbitrary. The default config will cover your floppy drives, but adding such a line will probably be needed to assign a dos type device name to a linux device. The /etc/mtools.conf file is well commented with plenty of commented out examples.

Use the appropriate value for the device, either /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1 in your case.
Now you can use mlabel to relabel the drive like this:
mlabel p:label

Using my example:

Code:

sudo mlabel -s p:

 Volume label is CruzerMini256 (abbr=CRUZERMINI2)

jschiwal@hpamd64:~> sudo mlabel  p:XMasMusic

You will need to safely eject the drive, and then reinsert it. It should automount with the new label.

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If these are removable drives you don't want to have them mounted when you boot. If one of them is disconnected, it will cause a stall or a failure to boot up successfully.

If your system doesn't use udev, and drives don't automount, then you could have entries in /etc/fstab that include the options "noauto,user,uid=username,gid=groupname".

This will allow you to mount these drives as a normal user without having to use sudo or enter a password. You would need to create a mount point for it, but this would allow you to include the mount commands in your ~/.profile file.

Here is how the XMASMUSIC pendrive automounted:

Code:

/dev/sdb1 on /media/XMASMUSIC type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,flush,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=lower

So if I wanted to use an fstab entry I would probably use:

Code:

LABEL=XMAS /media/XMAS vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,flush,uid=jschiwal,fmask=117,dmask=007,utf8,shortname=lower