How can I rename a Logical Volume Group?

Question

I have noticed that while I can safely change the name of the Logical Volume (LM Volume) in /Volumes (currently: Apple SSD), I cannot find a way to change the name of the Logical Volume Group (currently: Crucial M4 SSD).

The latter is a legacy from my previous Macbook Pro's hard drive. Can I change this name?

Answer 1

You can change the name, but doing so requires that you wipe the entire drive. If you're happy to do that, and with the disclaimer that this is scary stuff, then:

• Right click the drive in Finder and Eject it.

• Open Terminal

  • Type diskutil list and find the identifier for the GUID_partition_scheme of the disk you want to wipe.
  • Type sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/INDENTIFIER bs=1024 count=1024, replacing IDENTIFIER with the identifier of the disk you want to wipe. Do not get the identifier wrong.

• Open Disk Utility

  • You will see the newly formatted disk, now with its factory supplied name rather than the out of date name that was bothering you.

  • If you wish to further replace this with a specific name of your choosing:

    • Select the disk and click the 'Erase' tab.
    • Choose 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)'. [OSX only renames the Logical Volume Group if you encrypt the drive. If you don't want to encrypt the drive, then just keep the factory name.]
    • Type your desired name into the 'Name' box and click 'Erase...'.
    • The logical volume group and the first disk partition will now have identical names. If you then wish to rename the disk partition, you can do so easily by simply selecting the disk in Finder, hitting Ctrl-I and updating its name in the pop-up dialog.