Why Not To Change The Mac Hd To A Shorter Name

[Adison Ross]

One of my friends buys a Mac mini with OS X 10.5.8 and one of the very first things which I have noticed was the previous owner had changed the single drive name from Macintosh HD to a new one.
I read somewhere that it is not good to change the primary name of the hard drive from Macintosh HD.

 

[SGilbert]

Why? I have always changed the HD name. Never have had a problem.
FWIW, I change the icon also.

 

[DeltaMac]

Correct - you can name the hard drive anything you like (although I would not use special characters in a hard drive name). I like distinctive hard drive names, so I remember which system I am using (I have about 10 different Macs)
I think you may be referring to changing the name of the user folder (the home folder). Works without difficulty until the next time you either logout, or restart your Mac. Everything gets reset because the user name doesn't change, and the system on reboot creates a new user with the original name, so you can log in to something. You have to know what you are doing to fix that one. Easy enough fix, but helps you learn not to change folder names on a whim…

 

[Satcomer]

The OP received bad information! There are Apple Support documents OS X Mountain Lion: Rename your hard disk, OS X Mavericks: Rename items on your Mac & OS X Yosemite: Rename files, folders, and disks.