GIVE DIFFERENT ICONS TO EACH USB STICK
When you insert a USB stick into your PC, File Explorer (press Windows+e then select ‘This PC’) will show it using the same icon as your hard drive. Insert multiple sticks – or one that you’ve split into partitions, as described on the previous page – and you’ll see a group of identical icons, making it hard to tell one from the other. However, by creating a file (called ‘autorun.inf’) on your USB stick, you can set it to use unique icons, making your sticks and partitions instantly distinguishable.
You first need to select which icon you want to use for each USB stick. To browse a selection of free, high-quality icons go to Iconarchive ( https://iconarchive.com) and use the search box at the top. In our example, we’re going to assign icons to the USB stick that we split into three partitions in the Mini Workshop opposite. The first partition is for photos, so we searched for ‘camera’, hovered over a suitable icon, then clicked the ICO option (see screenshot below) to download it. We repeated this to find icons for the other two partitions: videos and music.
If you can’t find a suitable option on Iconarchive, you could try creating your own icons from images (such as a photo of your USB stick) using Convertico ( https://convertico.com). Click ‘Convert’ at the top and choose whether you want to convert a JPG or PNG image to an icon. Untick the ‘I agree to publicly display…’ box (located just under the upload box – this keeps your icons private), drag your image into the upload box, then click the red download button.
Once you have your icon, rename it usb.ico (select the file and press F2 to do this), then copy the file to your USB stick’s root directory (for our stick’s first partition, this is D:\).
You now need to create the ‘autorun. inf’ file and set it to use your icon. Click start, type notepad, then press Enter. In the Notepad window that appears, type the following over two lines (you can copy the text from our Pastebin account at www.snipca.com/37294): [autorun] icon=usb.ico
Press Ctrl+s to save the file, name it autorun.inf, then save it to your USB stick’s root directory, alongside the icon file. To keep things neat and prevent the files from being accidentally deleted, you can hide them by selecting them both in File Explorer, right-clicking one of them, selecting Properties then ticking the Hidden box. Click OK to save your changes. If you need to view the files at a later date, click the View menu, then tick the ‘Hidden items’ box.
Restart your computer. Once Windows has loaded, open File Explorer, select This PC and you’ll see your new USB icons (we kept it obvious – see screenshot above). Because the files are stored on your USB sticks, you’ll see the drive icons you’ve set no matter which computer you connect your sticks to.
For the finishing touch, select each drive in turn and press F2 to change their label from the default of NEW VOLUME to something more descriptive.