Setting a Custom Icon for your External Drives in Windows Explorer

January 10, 2012 7:34 AM Comments [25] Posted in Musings

Ok, I like my icons. You arrange your desk perhaps, shuffle papers, I update things with totally unneeded icons. A while back I made, ahem, these awesome Visual Studio Command Prompt and PowerShell icons with Overlays because, frankly, pretty icons make life better.

I did these back in the day.

image

I even did a little one for the system menu, 'cause that's how I roll.

image

I just bought a nice 3 Terabyte Seagate USB3 External Drive that I'm very happy with, but I noticed that it had an awesome icon. This epic icon was was making my other drives jealous. This, of course, cannot stand, Dear Reader.

Ugly icons! Make it stop!

Easily fixed, friends.

Create a text file in the root of each drive called Autorun.inf with contents like this:

[autorun]
icon=\CustomIcon.ico

Any icon you like will do. You may need to reboot to see the changes. Now my externals are making my internals look bad!

Lovely Icons

Enjoy!

Comments [25]
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012 8:05:30 AM UTC
This epic icon was was making my other drives jealous. This, of course, cannot stand, Dear Reader.

Nice lines! haha :) You should have mailed Seagate for a change request to make an icon which is less epic.
JP Hellemons
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 8:45:38 AM UTC
the reviews for the drive on amazon look really bad, i would check out the claims that the drive fails early
martin lees
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 9:54:23 AM UTC
Excellent!
Sarath C
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 12:25:40 PM UTC
You have so many drives :) (external, home server,...)

I still need an external drive to store my photos, important documents and a full backup of my comp.

One day i'll lose something, i can smell it.

Fabrice Moll
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 1:37:18 PM UTC
Sadly, this doesn't work on Android phones, which delete the Autorun.inf file. Apparently, this is due to the security issues surrounding autorun. So much for my Droid Eye drive icon!

Is there a reason MS doesn't support/implement something like favicon, i.e. if an image file has a specific name then use it as the icon? How is Folder > Properties > Customize supposed to work? (It doesn't for drives.)
Charles Flatt
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 4:06:02 PM UTC
As a side note, don't forget to add higher res sizes to the icon so they scale nicely. I personally name all my drives after beer... Each tick mark of scale produces higher quality icon displays with more/different detail. Example: Rolling rock starts with just a horse head, then the bottle cap, then the full beer label at the extra large icon size. Probably way too geeky, but since I made them, it gives me a smile. Zoom In, Zoom out, Zoom In, Zoom out... Just like your presentations with scrolling through the windows with the quick keys - producing that kind of happy feeling.
Michael McDaniel
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 7:07:25 PM UTC
Hi,
where do you have the icons from? Cant find something matching for my HDD :(
Sebastian
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 8:00:22 PM UTC
You are cool. thanks I will now have some nifty icons
John A Davis
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 9:12:09 PM UTC
"Now my externals are making my internals look bad!"

You can change the icons of the internal ones too. See eg http://forums.techarena.in/customize-desktop/1090682.htm
Tobias Diez
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 10:06:46 PM UTC
I dig the one for the VS Command Prompt...
Trey White
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 12:16:59 AM UTC
Awesome stuff Scott. I found a great icon for my Western Digital Elements drive at http://rocketdock.com/addon/icons/31814
Damian Edwards
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 2:23:16 AM UTC
awesome post.what surpriseed me is you have so many drivers -:). so cool.
Ellison Bian
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 2:09:40 PM UTC
If only it would support png files like the rest of the planet :)
Tom McKearney
Thursday, January 12, 2012 11:09:10 AM UTC
Hey Scott,
This post reminded me Windows 98!
When I was much younger, I liked to change my hard drive's icons just by using this technique ;)
Mohammad Mahdi Ramezanpour
Thursday, January 12, 2012 12:35:11 PM UTC
So, any way to do this for mapped network drives?
Tom McKearney
Thursday, January 12, 2012 1:18:29 PM UTC
Haha, I found this trick several years ago.
Found it from the old CD disk, usually a CD disk contains an autorun.inf like below:
[Autorun]
Open=setup.exe
Icon=setup.exe,0
Peter Li
Friday, January 13, 2012 1:40:29 AM UTC
Great post Scott. Http://myblog4fun.com
David Mohorn
Friday, January 13, 2012 2:34:51 AM UTC
I love it how really smart geeks (my tribe), do silly tech things that are so cool!
Tom Watts
Tom Watts
Friday, January 13, 2012 4:36:20 AM UTC
Why not use a desktop.ini file instead of Autorun.inf?
Davin
Friday, January 13, 2012 12:35:17 PM UTC
with these updated icons, your 3TB drive looks much less impressive now ..
Paul Creyghton
Saturday, January 14, 2012 12:58:31 AM UTC
first world problem - resolved
sean
Monday, January 16, 2012 5:28:53 AM UTC
That dint make any difference for my external drive. My external hard drive is being displayed as one of the internal drives. Not under the removable media. Any clue?
Sarath C
Thursday, January 26, 2012 9:32:11 PM UTC
You don't have to restart. Just rename the volume, and that'll make it refresh the icon.
Thomas G. Mayfield
Friday, January 27, 2012 7:23:05 AM UTC
Hi friend,

Warm Greetings!

Today, I visited your website and found it to be very informative. I'm highly pleased to see the comprehensive resources being offered by your site. Kudos to you for the great work!
Sunil Yadav
Thursday, April 05, 2012 11:09:43 AM UTC
Some good Seagate GoFlex pics here:
http://prsync.com/seagate/seagate-freeagent-goflex-22930/
Chaz
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer’s view in any way.