Creating labels for disks in ubuntu

The ability to create or change the disk label of fat/fat32/vfat file systems/partitions doesn’t come with Parted; yet is quite simple to achieve with Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux :).

This comes in very handy when you have a number of fat devices (like USB, SD, etc) and want something more meaningful than just “disk” as its name.

Get mtools if you haven’t it already
sudo apt-get install mtools

Create a configuration file to avoid some error reporting
echo “mtools_skip_check=1″ > ~/.mtoolsrc

Check where your disk is in the linux devices
mount

Label your disk
mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 -s ::my_disc

…and there you have it.

Disconnect the device and reconnect it and the label will show when it is auto mounted.