How to set a disk or drive icon with a Windows icon or a custom icon on Windows 11?

Question

So you're trying to change your driver icon on Windows 11 but realized that the "Customize" section of the driver's properties is missing the "Change Icon..." button. Also, you'd like to use the icons that appear in the default icon selection view.

On the left a classic folder properties and on the right a disk properties

Screenshot of folder icon customization

What do you need to do to get this end result ?

Screenshot of the disk on my computer, the last with a custom icon

Answer 1

First step, select your icon

First you need to understand where the default icons come from. They are stored, as the path suggests, in the file %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll. They are other files that also contain icons, you can go check them over here : Windows Icons: Full list with details, locations & images

Next, you need to know which icon you what to use for your disk. Go to the link above and select your favorite icon. Remember the dll file you selected and the icon number for the next steps. Here it is the shell32.dll file and icon 42.

Screenshot of the website describing the Windows icons

Next, we can set this icon as a disk icon in two ways.

The simple way, create an autorun.inf file

If you meddled with USB drives you should be familiar with this one. Simply create a file named autorun.inf at the root of the disk, open it with your favorite text editor to add the following content :

[autorun]
icon="%WINDIR%\system32\shell32.dll,41"

Don't forget to substract 1 from the icon number you selected or it will take the wrong one ! In this example, the tree was icon 42 so I write down 41.

After this, reboot your computer and the disk should have the right icon !

The sexy way, editing the Windows registry

The big drawback of the previous method is that you have a to create a file at the disk root, it's ugly and simply won't do !

This method will explain to you how to achieve the same result without creating an extra file.

Please be aware that changing the registry can be dangerous if done wrong, feel free to export the registry current state in case anything happens.

1. Press Win+R, type regedit and click OK
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE | SOFTWARE | Microsoft | Windows | CurrentVersion | Explorer | DriveIcons
3. Create a new key by right clicking DriveIcons, selecting New > Key and name it after the drive letter (e.g. E)

Create new key

4. Within this drive letter key create another new key and name DefaultIcon

Final folder tree

5. Double click the default value and in the new window insert the same line as the autorun.inf file ("%WINDIR%\system32\shell32.dll,41") and click OK :

Don't forget to substract 1 from the icon number you selected or it will take the wrong one ! In this example, the tree was icon 42 so I write down 41.

And there you have it ! You don't even need to restart your computer.

Screenshot of the disk on my computer, the last with a custom icon

Can I use a custom .ico instead of a Windows icon ?

Of course, take any of the methods above and write the path to the .ico file instead of the shell32 path.

Autorun method :

[autorun]
icon=drive.ico

Registry edit method :