having trouble keeping external drive at one drive

[Nils Kassube]

Scott Berry wrote:
> I am having trouble with my external drive which I wrote about
> yesterday for the fstab file.  It seems to want to change drive /dev
> positions whenever i reboot.  For example, one time it may be sdf1
> when I reboot and the next time it will be sdb1.  

Changing device names is normal behaviour nowadays if you have more than 
one disk. Therefore it is recommended to use UUIDs [1] for the fstab 
file. As an alternative you can give the partitions labels [2] but be 
careful with duplicate names.

> is there a way to
> actually assign it a drive letter and make it stay?  Thanks in
> advance for all the help.

If by drive letter you mean the device name, then the answer is no. The 
kernel uses the device names in the sequence it detects the disks and 
the time until a specific device is found isn't constant.


Nils

[1] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingUUID>
[2] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RenameUSBDrive>