Label a USB flash drive with your contact info in case you lose it
Posted on May 25, 2008 at 5:31 am
I just came across a very cool tip on LifeHacker that teaches you how to label your USB flash drive with your name and phone number in case you lose it! That is simply brilliant because I have already lost 3 and I’m sure someone somewhere is enjoying that extra 5 GB’s of storage space!
If I can label my drive so that when the person who finds it connects it to their computer, it will show up in My Computer with not just another drive letter, but with my actual name and phone number, thus giving me a greater chance of getting it back!
Of course, it’s always best to encrypt your USB flash drive if you have any sensitive data stored on it. Either way, if you carry half your life on your USB drive, you better have a way to get it back quickly in case you lose it!
Earlier I had written about a cool service called GadgetTrack that lets you track all of your prized gadgets like laptops, cameras, PDA’s, and more in case they are lost or stolen. If you USB stick is that important, you might want to use this service for a minimal fee.
However, if you’re cheap like me, then just labeling your USB drive will suffice. Here’s how you can setup your flash drive so that instead of showing up as “Removable Disk”, it comes up as “Aseem Kishore (XXX-XXX-XXXX)” along with a custom icon of yourself!
Image Source: LifeHacker
Step 1 is to open up a new Notepad document. Next, put this line in as the first line of the text file:
[autorun]
Next, save the file into the root directory of your USB drive, not inside any folder and name it autorun.inf.
Make sure that when you save the file, you type in the .inf extension and that you choose “All Files” for the Save as type option.
Now that the file is saved on your USB drive as autorun.inf, go ahead a find a suitable icon for your drive that you would want to appear next to it. In the above picture, you can see the icon was a smiling yellow icon.
If you don’t already have an icon or don’t know how to get one, you can create your own icons from any picture that you have on your computer, thus making it your USB drive even more identifiable! I wrote a post earlier on how to use a program called ImagIcon, which lets you convert JPG, BMP, and PNG images into Windows icons.
Anyway, once you have your icon (.ICO) file, go ahead and save it into the root directory of your USB drive, again not inside any folder. Then open up the autorun.inf file in Notepad again and add the following two lines:
icon = .\myicon.ico
label=My Name (mobile xxx-xxx-xxxx)
That’s it! Three simple lines of code in your file! Obviously, put in your name and number in the above text. You can also mark the file as read-only and hide it so that it’s not visible to anyone unless they have “Show hidden files and folders” enabled, which most people do not.
You can do this by right-clicking on the autorun.inf file and going to Properties. On the General tab, you’ll see at the bottom two check boxes visible:
Go ahead and check both of those options and you’re set! Now when you plugin your flash drive into any computer, the autorun.inf file will run and change the default name of the drive to what you specified in the file! Very simple to accomplish, yet can reap huge benefits if you ever lose that tiny little stick!!!
Has anyone tried it and if so, did you get it to work or not? Post a question or comment! Enjoy! Source: LifeHacker
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That was nice tip aseem. I used to personalize it by providing the volume name during formatting.
how to make the icon work in Vista???????
hi
i use USB drive to transfer data from one PC to another friends pc and i format it after doing so to prevent it from any virus. in this case the autorun.inf and myicon.ico file would get delete.
can we store these file permanently in flash drive ??
I created an autorun.inf file as follows:
[Autorun]
icon=bird.ico
label=my lebel
The above file works with Windows XP but not with Windows 98SE. Any idea why?
gr8 tip love it!!!
Bill > Windows 98 does not have this capability, it was added in Windows XP, and may only work with SP2 installed.
Icons from autorun.inf may not work on all systems. I am aware of some Dell PC’s which seem to be unable to display custom icons and labels from autorun.inf files. No ideas why. Same device works fine on non-Dell systems.