If you have got multiple DVD drives installed on your computer system or are making use of virtual DVD drives you might have noticed that they do not come with proper names. On my system my Samsung DVD drive is simply called drive E while my first virtual drive is drive F. That leads to confusion every now and then when my brain goes blank and I try to figure out which the hardware DVD drive is and which it is not (I usually pick the wrong one)
The Windows operating system – at least Windows XP – is not offering name editing for DVD drives. At least not the easy way. You might know that it is possible to change the drive letter of a hard drive in Windows by right-clicking its icon and selecting Properties. The very same option is grayed out for DVD drives and probably other drive types as well.
Some solutions are floating around on the Internet that involve Registry editing which is something that most inexperienced users do not want to do. A far better solution is a small program called Drive Namer which has been requested and completed at the Donation Coder forum a long time ago.
Drive Namer is a small portable application for the Windows operating system that can change the name of any drive letter easily. It has been primarily designed to work with DVD drives and other drive types with locked name editing. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 to run but does not have any other requirements.
It will display the small form upon startup that provides a pull down menu for all drive letters of the computer system including those not in use. Changing the drive letter of a DVD drive would simply involve selecting the correct drive letter of the DVD drive from the menu and entering a name in the form next to it. A click on the SET button will enable the name on the system which can be checked in Windows Explorer.
Windows Explorer Before
Windows Explorer After
The names can be reset by selecting a drive letter and pressing the Reset button in the software program. The software does not have to be running after the names of the DVD drives have been edited.
The original location of Drive Namer is no longer providing the file download for the application. You can download it below right from the Ghacks server. The download has a size of 10 Kilobytes. There is also a download link at the Donation Coder website pointing to a file host. Could go down in the future which is why we provide the download mirror as well.
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13 Responses to “Add Names To DVD Drives”
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That comes in handy, thanks!
Thanks! This has been annoying me for a while. I just never thought to look it up.
This is a VERY useful site :)
yeah thanks! i’ve wanted to do this but never knew how
Just as a note: in Windows Vista, you have to right click on this and run it as administrator. And don’t forget to have your anti-virus’ Registry Protection modes disabled.
I’ve scanned it with Avira, McAfee and Norton. This came up clean.
And I’m saving a copy of this on MyYahoo email. It’s neat – allows me 20 meg size emails and unlimited storage. And it doesn’t block .exe files like Gmail does. I have all my nifty utilities up on Yahoo waiting to be pulled down at whatever site I happen to need it.
Wonderful one, Thanks for telling about this one.
Dante you probably heard of Winrar,compression,for the gmail .exe scaning.I have them also on gmail,on my desktop via thunderbird,IMAP :-P.
Thanks Martin for the utility it’s useful as i have 6 from alcohol 52 and 1 from my dvd writer.Hope it won’t cause registry problems.
Thanks, I’m going to pass this on!
application failed to initialize properly
hey guys – anybody got an alternative for this, that’ll work in Win XP Pro 64bit?
When running, it says “application failed to initialize properly”… :/
Thanks.