How do I rename the Boot Camp partition?

Question

The partition is currently called BOOTCAMP, and I would like it to be called Windows.

When I try to rename the partition is Disk Utility, no error is displayed, but the change is not persisted (i.e. I am allowed to type a name, but after I hit Enter, the name is unchanged).

I tried the following three commands in Terminal:

diskutil renameVolume disk0s4 Windows
diskutil renameVolume /dev/disk0s4 Windows
diskutil renameVolume /Volumes/BOOTCAMP Windows

The result is always:

Failed to rename volume: Invalid request (-69886)

The name of the partition can not be changed using Finder.

How can I successfully rename this partition? Is the name a property of the partition (e.g. recorded in the GUID_partitioning_scheme on disk0)? Or is a property of the mount in macOS (e.g. its name is BOOTCAMP because it is mounted at /Volumes/BOOTCAMP).

If it's the first, maybe I can change it with a tool that works with the GUID_partitioning_scheme directly? (This seems dangerous though...)

If it's the latter, where can I change the way macOS mounts this partition? (And is that safe?)

Answer 1

Under default conditions, you'll need to rename the BOOTCAMP volume from within Windows.

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In macOS, when the Boot Camp Assistant sets up a partition to install Windows it creates a FAT32 volume named BOOTCAMP.

During the install of Windows, the user is supposed to reformat the volume as NTFS.

By default, NTFS volumes are read-only under macOS and why the renaming, after the install, needs to done from within Windows, unless one has enabled NTFS write support under macOS. This typically requires the installation of third-party software, e.g. Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Tuxera.