The label command is used to view or change the label of a computer’s drives.

Availability

Label is an external command that is available for the following Microsoft operating systems. MS-DOS 4.0x and earlier used label.com as the external file. MS-DOS 5.0 and versions of Windows that support this command use label.exe as the external file.

  • Availability

  • Label syntax

  • Label examples

  • Possible issues

  • Questions and answers

  • All Versions of MS-DOS

  • Windows 95

  • Windows 98

  • Windows ME

  • Windows NT

  • Windows 2000

  • Windows XP

  • Windows Vista

  • Windows 7

  • Windows 8

  • Windows 10

  • Windows 11

Label syntax

Windows Vista and later syntax

LABEL [drive:][label] LABEL [/MP] [volume] [label]

Windows XP and earlier syntax

LABEL [drive:][label]

Label examples

label a: hope

The example above would label the floppy diskette in drive A: to “hope,” but will not label if your disk is write-protected.

  • Windows Vista and later syntax.
  • Windows XP and earlier syntax.

Possible issues

If your hard drive label contains ASCII or other extended characters and you are running MS-DOS 6.0 or lower, running ScanDisk may corrupt the hard drive.

Because ScanDisk is looking for corrupt or incorrect data, if the hard drive label has ASCII or any unrecognized characters it attempts to fix those characters. If ScanDisk attempts to fix your label, it may remove all information and place it into a CHK file.

If the hard drive has unrecognizable characters, unable to delete the partition using fdisk.

Use label to recreate the label and then use fdisk to delete the partition after label created.

Questions and answers

  • How to rename or label a disk drive.
  • How to view the name or label of a drive.
  • See our label definition for further information and related links on this term.