Change Hard Drive Icon Windows 11

[Ottavia Delamar]

Ihave an external hard drive connected to my Mac, and it is partitioned into two parts. One is called Time Machine Backups (and, as you might guess, it's where Time Machine backs up to). The other partition is soon to be Windows, and I would like to change the icon of said partition to reflect this. I have my image, but when I go to change it (trust me, I've tried most of the recommended ways, including drag-and-drop, Cmd-C and Cmd-V, everything), I can drag-and-drop etc. and it will let me, but the icon doesn't change to what I want, it changes to the default image for PNG, JPEG, etc. It doesn't show what I want it to, even after logging out and logging back in. Is there any way to change the icon to what I want?

One strange thing which I think might have relation to the problem is that Parallels Desktop shows the drive as 'Read Only', which it is not and says 'You can read and write' on the info and I can read and write.

Usually opening a png file with alpha in preview and copying it and pasting the clipboard to the drive info icon area works, however, this problem might have to do with how 10.10.5 deals with ExFAT formats.

It's crazy, well, I came up with a new meaningful name for the drive so I'll live with a NEW name for the sake of the correct icon. It's really stupid. I'm really amazed OSX still having stupid bugs like this...

One of the tools I user for creating icons from images is the aptly named Image2icon. It can create an icon from just about any image, and attached it to disk, folders, etc. The paid version is needed for automatically applying an icon to a drive, but you can just as easily use the app to attach an icon to a folder which it does for free. You can then just copy past that icon on to a drive.

You should be able to copy paste the image into a folder or disks thumbnail representation when the items Get Info window is open. This hasn't changed in years. (see the link Personalize Your Mac by Changing Desktop Icons for details)

The advantage of using an icon creation app is that you will have a complete icon set, that is the icon will included all the various sizes likely to be used by your Mac, from 16x16 all the way up to 1024x1024 at 144 DPI. You won't get that from the simple copy/past of a JPEG.

I've always been able to use jpeg images in the past for icons. Is this something new? I just upgraded to a new imac, but have been using macs for 10 years. There has to be a way to do this without using a downloaded application...?

Right, I should be able to, is the key phrase. But, just like the poster of this thread, I was having the exact same issue. When I paste, or drag and drop, my jpeg file onto the disk icon, under get info, all I get is an icon of the jpeg file image...not the picture.

Luckily, I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was copying the file associated with the photo. Instead, what I should have been doing was opening up the photo in preview and copying it from there. It was a silly mistake for sure, but clearly I was not the only one making it. Hopefully this saves some time for people that might be having the same issue, that also have no interest in using outside software to accomplish something that should be simple.

I have Mac OS X as my main OS and I tried to change the icon for my Yosemite partition. I had to boot into Yosemite and change the icon there. The change was accepted and appeared back on my Mac OS X.

First backup and then delete all Key with names of Drive for which the icons you need to restore. For example to restore drive icon of C: drive, delete Key "C". Once you are done restart your computer. In my case the culprit was hard disk sentinel which had left overs even after uninstall.

Drop box running smoothly for the last few months. This last week numerous issues. 1st the icon app in the tray stopped working. If I click on it I get the standard Windows 10 messages which basically says do you want this app to make changes on your hard drive"? I say yes and nothing. Still no app. The small icon that gives you the symbols when syncing/synced, etc. has no symbol just the icon in white. When I right click it's empty except the message "could not load content". .

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. Yesterday I did that and my desktop became really slow and sluggish. Then today I noticed the drop box verision was different, however, only about 1/2 my files are on the desktop. Ugh, really don't want to do another install/reinstall. Seems to really mess things up.

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Update, I like many other dropbox users I've seen commenting with similar issues; resolved the problem by disconnecting from the app. Unfortunate because, unlike many others, I actually liked the app while it was working. After disconnecting drop box is back to it's ole self again and my PC is no longer sluggish. Sad to say. I hope drop box can get the app to where it's functioning as it should.

Changing your drive icons is just one of the many ways you can customize your icons in Windows. You can even make high-resolution icons out of your own images if you can't find other icons you like. We've got two ways you can change drive icons in Windows. The first way uses a free third-party app to let you change the icon for an individual drive. The second way involves a couple of quick edits to the Windows Registry.

The easiest way to change the icon for an individual drive is with a free tool named Drive Icon Changer. It was originally written for Windows Vista but it also works in Windows 7, 8, and 10 to let you quickly change the icon for any drive.

After you download and extract the program, you'll need to run it with administrative privileges. Right-click the EXE file and choose "Run as administrator." The first time you run the tool, it may ask you to install some .NET Framework files, so go ahead and let it do that. It's also a portable app, so there's no installation necessary.

After running it, you'll see that Drive Icon Changer has only one screen where you select the drive for which you want to change the icon and then browse for the ICO file you want to use. There are no additional settings available. Select your drive, find your ICO file, and then click the "Save" button. In our example, we're using a set of wooden drive icons from IconArchive.

You'll then need to restart your PC for the change to take effect if you selected an internal drive. If you selected a removable drive, you can also just disconnect and reconnect it. If you're changing the icons for multiple drives, you can also wait and restart your PC when you're done with all of them.

Drive Icon Changer works by creating two hidden files on the root directory of whatever drive you select. One is a copy of the ICO file that gets renamed to "Drive.ico" and the other is a simple autorun.inf file that contains only the following lines:

So, if you prefer, you could just create that autorun.inf file yourself using Notepad, copy the ICO file to your drive and rename it, restart your PC (or disconnect and reconnect the drive if it's removable), and the drive icon would change. The tool just makes it a bit easier.

NOTE: Since this works by saving files to the drive, optical drives are tricky. You won't be able edit the image used for an empty optical drive or the image used when a finalized disc is inserted. You can, however, change the image for a rewritable drive or a writeable drive you haven't finalized yet. You can change optical drive icons using the instructions in the next section, though.

While changing an individual drive icon is much easier using Drive Icon Changer, you can also make a similar change by editing the Registry. Why go through the extra effort? Well, you might have some autorun restrictions in place that don't let you use the first method, or you might want to change the icon used for an optical drive. Maybe you don't like the idea of letting an app do what you can do yourself. Or maybe you're just curious to see where this stuff is in the Registry. At any rate, the changes are really pretty easy and they work in Windows 7, 8, and 10.

Standard warning: Registry Editor is a powerful tool and misusing it can render your system unstable or even inoperable. This is a pretty simple hack and as long as you stick to the instructions, you shouldn't have any problems. That said, if you've never worked with it before, consider reading about how to use the Registry Editor before you get started. And definitely back up the Registry (and your computer!) before making changes.

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