IMac running Mojave won't rename a new WD Elements external drive

[Fran43]

Please can someone help! When I right click on the drive icon there is no option to rename. and in the File menu the 'rename' option is greyed out.

 

[TonyAguila]

Please can someone help! When I right click on the drive icon there is no option to rename. and in the File menu the 'rename' option is greyed out.

Use Disk Utility to rename it.

 

[Fran43]

Use Disk Utility to rename it.

View attachment 4598

Thank you Tony. I have tried that but when I hit Enter after typing in the new name it didn't actually change it. Do you think there is something weird going on with the drive itself?

 

[TonyAguila]

Thank you Tony. I have tried that but when I hit Enter after typing in the new name it didn't actually change it. Do you think there is something weird going on with the drive itself?

That is a possibility. It will help if you can tell us the model of your Mac, the macOS version, and the type—hard drive or SSD. Is the volume you are trying to rename the sole volume of the drive, or are there any other volumes/partitions?

If you are able to clone or simply copy the data you wish to preserve in that volume, you could temporarily copy the contents and then do a complete wipe/reformat of the drive using Disk Utility, then create the volume with the name you want, and then copy back the previous content. If you are running a version of macOS that will support it, I recommend formatting the drive as APFS.

In my screen grab above, one of my attached SSDs has four “drives” in a single APFS container. So if the drive in question is the only volume in your physical drive, you should be able to reformat it without losing other data.

 

[Fran43]

Thanks again Tony. It's a brand new external WD Elements 1Tb drive I'm trying to rename. I've tried with a MacBook Air equally unsuccessfully. Could it be something to do with the WD drive? I have tried their customer Services but they were totally unhelpful.

 

[TonyAguila]

Thanks again Tony. It's a brand new external WD Elements 1Tb drive I'm trying to rename. I've tried with a MacBook Air equally unsuccessfully. Could it be something to do with the WD drive? I have tried their customer Services but they were totally unhelpful.

If it’s brand new, you should be able to swap it for another one, or have them fix the problem themselves. I must have gone through more than a dozen of their 2-TB Elements drives, which is the standard I install for most of my clients. Always two at a time, for redundant Time Machine backups. I have had to retire one, at least 5 years ago, because of some strange behavior, but to the present, I still have that drive that I use for temporary storage. I just can’t imagine a Western Digital Elements drive could not be renamed even with Disk Utility if there was not something inherently bad with it, in which case I would not want to keep it.