Mounted volume name in terminal is different from in GUI

Question

The basic problem is that in the GUI shows a directory name with no space but when I cd to it in the terminal, the directory name has a space in it. What would cause the names to be different?

The full story is:

I have been trying to backup my computer to a WD hard drive that I was previously using when I used Windows. When I initially mounted the hard drive it named itself "My Book". I changed the name of the mounted file to MyBook through GParted as explained on Ubuntu Wiki. I also reformatted the hard drive file system to ext3. I navigated to the media directory where it is now mounted, and the directory name was still "My Book". So I changed the name from the command line with (also according to the instructions on Ubuntu Wiki). The directory name still has a space in the terminal but not in the GUI.

I am using Ubuntu 14.04.

More info:

I ran the 2 commands requested by mikeserv.

~>$ lsblk -f

NAME FSTYPE LABEL MOUNTPOINT
sda 
├─sda1 /
├─sda2 
└─sda5 [SWAP]
sdb 
└─sdb1 /media/cynthia/MyBook
sr0 
sr1 udf WD SmartWare /media/cynthia/WD SmartWare

~>$ findmnt

TARGET SOURCE FSTYPE OPTIONS
/ /dev/disk/by-uuid/1871174a-d18f-4f97-921c-428a917e4851
 ext4 rw,relat
├─/sys sysfs sysfs rw,nosui
│ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs rw,relat
│ │ └─/sys/fs/cgroup/systemd systemd cgroup rw,nosui
│ ├─/sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relat
│ ├─/sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relat
│ ├─/sys/kernel/security security rw,relat
│ └─/sys/fs/pstore pstore rw,relat
├─/proc proc proc rw,nosui
│ └─/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc binfmt_m rw,nosui
├─/dev udev devtmpfs rw,relat
│ └─/dev/pts devpts devpts rw,nosui
├─/run tmpfs tmpfs rw,nosui
│ ├─/run/lock tmpfs rw,nosui
│ ├─/run/shm tmpfs rw,nosui
│ └─/run/user tmpfs rw,nosui
│ └─/run/user/1000/gvfs gvfsd-fuse fuse.gvf rw,nosui
├─/media/cynthia/WD SmartWare /dev/sr1 udf ro,nosui
└─/media/cynthia/MyBook /dev/sdb1 ext3 rw,nosui

• mikeserv: Which filesystem is this? NTFS? Can you do the following two commands in the terminal and paste their output into the question please?: lsblk -f; findmnt
• PersianGulf: please give us more data....

Answer 1

If you are using a GPT partition table, there are two labels involved and different filemanagers may show either label:

Partition Label

parted /dev/sdb name 1 MyBook

will rename the first partition on /dev/sdb to MyBook.

Filesystem Label

e2label /dev/sdb1 MyBook

will rename the filesystem label on ext2/3/4 installed on /dev/sdb1. Different utilites are needed for other filesystems.

MSDOS partition tables only have filesystem labels though.

• Gilles 'SO- stop being evil': GPT partitions have names, but old-style PC partitions don't.
• MimiBambino: I received this error when I entered the parted /dev/sdb name 1 MyBook command. Error: msdos disk labels do not support partition names.
• garethTheRed: As Giles mentions in the comment above, MSDOS partition tables do not support labels. The lsblk output you added to your post suggests it's a MSDOS table, which explains why you won't be able to add/change the partition name with the parted.