You can turn off all system generated device icons by doing the following:
K Menu > Personal Settings (Configure Desktop) > Desktop > Behavior
On the Device Icons tab, uncheck the box in front of "Show device icons" then click Apply
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If you want to globally change the icon that represents a specific USB device, you will have to first locate the icon library you are using by going to:
K Menu > Personal Settings (Configure Desktop) > Appearance & Themes
The icon theme will be the highlighted one. Then go to the library for that theme in / (root). For example, in SUSE 10.3, I use Crystalsvg.
32x32 Device icons for this theme are located in:
/opt/kde3/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/devices
(other distro's may not use /opt/kde3 so you might check /usr/share/icons and look there)
You would need to be in ROOT to insert (paste) your new custom icons into the icon library for this theme. First rename the old icons you are replacing by adding a "bkp" suffix, then rename the new ones exactly as the originals.
Device icons have 2 forms, _mount and _unmount and several sizes (16, 22, 32, 48, 64, 128 ) You would have to make sets for all versions and sizes. It is quite an undertaking but can be done with persistence. I've done it for the trash icon successfully.
After modifying the libraries, you would then have to go back to K Menu > Personal Settings (Configure Desktop) > Appearance & Themes and just click on any other theme to activate the "Apply" button. Then click back on the installed theme (the one you modified) and click "Apply. This will refresh the theme with your new custom icons.
Whew!
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If you want a brand new theme that contains icons you like better, select it here in the Themes tab and click Apply to try it out. You can also download new complete themes to add to your choices from KDE Look
http://www.kde-look.org/index.php?xconte…x12x13x14x15x16
or other sources within your distribution repositories.