How can I unrename my SD card?

Post deleted since I think I’ve solved the problem

It would have been nice if you had left the post and added the solution in case other people also wanted to do this.

1. Ignore the error message apparently telling you to insert the “RISC_OS_SD” disc, despite having had no boot-up problems (which means it can’t have fallen out of its internal socket).

2. Ignore how the icon bar keeps telling you that the SD disc has the name “:0” since it’s lying to you.

3. Click MENU on the SD icon, and follow the “Name disc” arrow to the “Disc name” box, which (unlike every other drive on the icon bar) will always be empty to trick unwary users.

4. Type “RISC_OS_SD” into the box, and press ENTER.

5. The name of the SD card will stay as “:0” to make you think that you’ve done the procedure incorrectly.

6. However, if you’re lucky and you did this right, then the annoying error message won’t come back next day.

7. Never try to give the SD card a useful name, even though this works beautifully for a USB stick when you click on its “:0” name which is situated right next to the SD icon’s “:0” name.

I think you’ve become confused by the difference between removable and non-removable discs.

SDFS discs are like floppies – the user can remove them at any time and the computer is none the wiser. Until it goes to access the disc it doesn’t know that the disc has changed. For this reason they never display the disc name under the icon, only the drive number.

Non-removable discs like hard drives have the name underneath because the user can’t change the medium. The icon is there all the time, and the name won’t change unless you rename the disc.

What of USB drives? Perhaps a distinction can be drawn between removable discs and removable drives. Pulling out a USB stick removes the drive, by analogy with unplugging the floppy drive rather than ejecting the disc. Having removed the drive, there is nothing to ask ‘are you empty’ – it’s as if the USB stick was never there.

The complication comes with USB devices which contain removable slots, for instance USB-connected SD card readers. I don’t know exactly what happens in this case, but my instinct is to unplug the card reader from USB first – I don’t completely trust random card readers to correctly tell the OS that the card has changed, but I know the USB disconnect is reliable. That should cause a correct detection of the new card. I’m not clear on whether name or number is displayed underneath, but wonder if it depends on how the card reader reports this in the SCSI protocol.

(This assumes FileCore format – FAT is more complicated)