How to rename USB flash drive

[everway9]

Hello everyone.

On my Windows 10 PC I've formatted a USB flash drive with the exFAT file system and the volume name is 'S-Disk USB'.

When I plug it into my Note 8 it appears as USB storage '22AB-F701'.

I know I'm very fussy and it's not exactly important but I'm interested to know why it shows as 22AB-F701 in my phone and not S-Disk USB as in my PC and if it's possible to rename it?

I could just name it as 22AB-F701 on my PC and then it would be the same on both devices but I'd prefer S-Disk USB if at all possible.

Anyone?

Cheers.

 

[Rukbat]

Android uses the USB designation of USB-connected storage devices.

 

[everway9]

Android uses the USB designation of USB-connected storage devices.

Hi. Thanks for posting.

So is that like a ID thats unique to that flash drive? Like a mac address is unique to a network adaptor?

 

[everway9]

Strange. On my Android TV it shows as USB5002. I'm totally confused now.

 

[Rukbat]

It's more the line of flash drives, IOW, a SanDisk 16GB will have an ID, but all of that type of SanDisk 15GB drives will have the same ID. The phone may also assign a number to the drive that's the phone's ID plus an additional number.

There's no standard for how the device identifies the drive, except that 2 drives connected to the same device (and you can do that with a USB hub or a Type C hub (depending on the device) have to be identified differently. (Otherwise it would be like having 2 Drive Cs on a PC - a program trying to read from "Drive C" would read garbage.)

 

[everway9]

It's more the line of flash drives, IOW, a SanDisk 16GB will have an ID, but all of that type of SanDisk 15GB drives will have the same ID. The phone may also assign a number to the drive that's the phone's ID plus an additional number.

There's no standard for how the device identifies the drive, except that 2 drives connected to the same device (and you can do that with a USB hub or a Type C hub (depending on the device) have to be identified differently. (Otherwise it would be like having 2 Drive Cs on a PC - a program trying to read from "Drive C" would read garbage.)

Thanks. So basically I have absolutely no chance whatsoever of making a usb flash drive show with the same name over all my devices (PC, android phone and android tv). Drat.

 

[GuccizBud]

This is an old thread, but for the sake of accuracy via-à-vis future readers . . .

"22AB-F701" is the volume serial number of that SanDisk 16 GB card, which was assigned when that card was last formatted. Were you to reformat that card, it would be a different serial number, albeit of the same format ( ⁠xxxx-xxxx, with every character being either an uppercase letter A–Z or a digit 0–9 ⁠).

So you can see that all 16 GB SanDisk cards would definitely ⁠not⁠ have the same code, since even the same card would have a different code were it to be reformatted. What the volume serial number does btw, is encode the date and exact time the storage device was formatted.

Note that it isn't only flash media that has a volume serial number, it's very single storage device formatted under Windows. On a Windows machine, open a CMD shell and look at any connected storage device, including the C: drive ⁠— do a "dir" of that drive and you'll see its  ⁠xxxx-xxxx volume serial number at the top of the directory listing.

The volume serial number thing goes all the way back to the early DOS days. It was there when the original IBM PC was released in 1981. Still there 40 years later, lol.

 

[everway9]

This is an old thread, but for the sake of accuracy via-à-vis future readers . . .

"22AB-F701" is the volume serial number of that SanDisk 16 GB card, which was assigned when that card was last formatted. Were you to reformat that card, it would be a different serial number, albeit of the same format ( ⁠xxxx-xxxx, with every character being either an uppercase letter A–Z or a digit 0–9 ⁠).

So you can see that all 16 GB SanDisk cards would definitely ⁠not⁠ have the same code, since even the same card would have a different code were it to be reformatted. What the volume serial number does btw, is encode the date and exact time the storage device was formatted.

Note that it isn't only flash media that has a volume serial number, it's very single storage device formatted under Windows. On a Windows machine, open a CMD shell and look at any connected storage device, including the C: drive ⁠— do a "dir" of that drive and you'll see its  ⁠xxxx-xxxx volume serial number at the top of the directory listing.

The volume serial number thing goes all the way back to the early DOS days. It was there when the original IBM PC was released in 1981. Still there 40 years later, lol.

Hi there @GuccizBud
Thank you very much for this useful info and especially for taking the time to reply to this old thread of mine. Much appreciated.