If you are bored seeing the default look of removable drives in Windows, here is a simple tutorial on how to change the default look. The Removable drive looks like this, without any customizations and its confusing if you have more than one drives connected to your PC.
The default look of Removable drives like USB pen drives, Memory cards for phones and cameras can be changes using these 3 simple steps.
1. First step is to find a good icon which will represent the removable drive. Make sure that the image has .ico extension.
2. Open Notepad. Type in whatever is given in the image.
Here Label denotes the text which you want to display in My Computer when the drive is connected and Icon represents the icon image name. Save this file as autorun.inf.
3. Copy both files (autorun.inf and Icon file) to your removable drive. You can make both files as hidden, if don’t want to see those files when you are connected to drive
Now unplug the drive and connect it back to USB and now you can see the effect of your customizations.
Have a look at the customizations of my removable drives (iBall USB drive and SE W700i cell phone 1GB drive).
A Cool tip. I’ll keep a icon of my blog’s favicon!
mmm interesting tip. It works only for removable drives ?? what about individual drive partitions ?
Nice tip! Every time I use a USB card reader for SD cards, the icon looks like a bunch of others I have. Now I can change it to something a bit more different! I probably won’t though due to laziness, but I hope I remember. (#):)
Very nice! But I like to keep my removable drives with the same icons so I remember that they are, in fact, removable drives.
Nice tip though.
This does seem to be a fun thing to do. Now that I have a lot of stock icons with me, I sure will try this out!
Great tip Nirmal , will surely help me to diffrentiate between my pen drive and cell phone .
Nice one, turn your drives from boring looking icons, to your favorite icons. this is surely going to give some fun
@Arpit,
I have not tried with Individual partition drives. May be you can try it tell us the result.
This tip is mainly to differentiate between partition drives and Removable drives.
Whenever I see the autorun.inf file, I jump to the conclusion that the stick has a virus and delete the inf file.
So, if you have made this modification – don’t give the stick to me without warning me first
Do you have any idea to write about how to kill USB toy virus or how to prevent from attacking ? Because we all still have been attacking by this virus a long time ago and still can’t beat it.
Thanks you.
Great way but just a question … is it safe?
Nice tip i will update my icons
Cool! I will change my icon too! This idea is fresh for me!
@Binny,
Even I had this perception that all .inf files are virus.
@Myo Kyaw Htun,
I have never encountered the situation mentioned by you.
@Rishi,
Did you mean to ask if it damages the drive or safety in terms of virus attack?
I’ve tried this.. and it’s a pretty sweet tip
[...] shares a tutorial on how to change the icon of a removable drive in Windows. If you are bored seeing the default look of removable drives in Windows, here is a simple tutorial [...]
Nice tip
Love the Sony Ericsson icon..
@Vikram,
Thanks for the comment.
@Kuanhoong,
Glad that you liked it. I did a lot of search for good SE icons.
cool handy tip
The trick you have mentioned would also work with Cds and Dvds.
[However in case of Cd and DVD it is a good idea not to use long file names with capital letters and special characters].
@ Arpit : Icon Packager ( http://www.stardock.com ) would do the job. After installing it simply right click on the partition you want to change icon for and set the icon from “Properties”.
Great….trying it out.
Came through Rishi.
@Pallab,
Thanks for the information. Icon Packager is a great software to change icons.
@Techzilo,
Thanks for the visit, hope you liked my blog.
Cool, now I’ll probably end up changing it every week (maybe not every week, but quite frequently at least).
Quite interesting
[...] Nirmal tell us How to Change the Default Icon for Removable Drives [...]
[...] Nirmal tell us How to Change the Default Icon for Removable Drives [...]
Hmm. This didn’t work for me. Do this trick also works on Windows 2003? I pondered.
@Chris,
I’m not sure about Windows 2003 as I have not worked on it. I dont have a system to test this also.
Heh. It doesn’t. It probably have to do something with the performance/preference settings. However, I tested it with Windows XP and it works just fine. Thanks!
[...] icon=PStart.exe Specifies the icon to be used in the autorun menu. The icon can be fetched from an .EXE file or it can be in the normal .ICO format. (more on changing icons here) [...]
Thank you for this tip.
On a related but not connected topic, would you know how to set change the default path of the ‘My Pictures’ short cut in XP.
Default points to ‘My Pictures’ folder in ‘My Documents’. I would like to change it to point to ‘Pictures’ folder on an external NAS drive. (Something like Y:/Pictures)
Anyone else have an idea on this?
@RJ,
I have not tried out the point mentioned by you, if I get a work around, I’ll surely post it.
[...] icon=PStart.exe Specifies the icon to be used for the USB drive. The icon can be fetched from an .EXE file or it can be in the normal .ICO format. (more on changing icons here) [...]
@RJ
that can be done by tweaking registry, if u are not aware of that, better get some tweaking software, lots of such softwares are available..
great share, thnx alot!
I found your tip from a google search…i was looking for how to change the folder icons on removable storage drives. This one is a good start.
Do you know if there’s a way to customize the folders on a flash drive so that the custom icons are changed in any vista machine you plug the flash drive into?
Is there anything i can put in the autrun file that will do it?
Dude!!
B*I*G C*H*E*E*R*S on this!!
By far one of the coolest tips given and easily understood!
Much obliged,
Patrick
Cool tip, need to check it
To change a folder icon on a removable disk, first create a folder in your My Documents and name it what you want the folder to be on your flash drive. Then, change the icon (Right-click > Properties > Customize > Change icon). Cut the folder onto your flash drive, and move the files from the old folder into the new folder, and delete the old folder.
I have tried this it didnt work for me can i get some help?
My icon is a converted image to .ico could that be the problem?
[autorun]
Label=Cruzer
Icon=favicon.ico
That is what i have wrote in notepad and than copied both the notepad file and the .ico image to usb but nothing has happend when i have taken the usb and out in reinserted it into a usb port :S
what am i doing wrong any idea? and my usb is a Sandisk Cruzer could that be it?
Many thanks for this.