[NTLUG:Discuss] USB hard drive question

[Richard Witt]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Mike LaPlante <mike at dividia.net> wrote:
> Fred James wrote:
>> All
>> I have two external USB hard drives on my Linux box, they never get
>> unplugged, and they are listed in fstab.  But on boot they don't always
>> come back as expected - the one I think of a ONE, might come back as
>> TWO, etc.  Is that just a feature of the beast?  BTW - Restarting
>> usually fixes that.
>> Regards
>> Fred James
>>
> You can setup Udev rules to identify each drive and create symlinks such
> as /dev/usbdriveONE and /dev/usbdriveTWO.
>
> The idea is to setup a rule that on boot detects things like
> make/model/serial number and creates a symlink from /dev/sdb1 to
> /dev/usbdriveONE. While the device may differ from sdb to sdc on each
> boot, the symlink should remain correct. So you would use the symlink in
> your fstab.
>
> Afraid I won't be much help giving specific instructions though, I had a
> hell of time getting the rule for my two PVR cards to work right. Ended
> up just taking stabs at it and lots of reboots later it seemed to be
> working so I've left it alone ever since.
>
> This site may be of help if you're up to the long read.
>
> http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html
>
>
> Cheers,
> Mike
>
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>

You can also set them up with udev and use the
/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx link.