Why does each new kernel change disk identities?

I'm guessing this is a "chat" subject, because it hasn't been a problem, but ...

My computer has four hard drives, and two of those drives get detected as having Windows installed on them. One is the active Windows 7, and the other has a small "first" partition that resulted from my installing the Windows 7 RC on it, several years ago. The drive now has Zorin OS and Grub2 on it. In the past several months, there have been several kernel updates, and I've noticed that each is accompanied by a rebuilding of grub.conf. When I first installed Zorin, the disk with active Windows was identified by the system as /dev/sda and the other was /dev/sdb. That was different from their BIOS boot settings, which were to boot first from the disk identified as sdb. Those BIOS settings remain as they were to this day. During each kernel update thereafter, though, the identification of those drives by the Zorin system has changed. At one point, what had been sda became sdc, and what had been sdb (the first drive in my BIOS boot order, and the one with Zorin and Grub2) became sdd. Then things changed back, somewhat, during the next kernel update. What had first been sda was again sda, but the drive that had started out as sdb (still by first boot drive in BIOS) was now sdc. The latest update has changed things again, so that my first boot drive is now sda, but the drive that was originally identified by Zorin as sda is now sdd

I've never seen this with other Linux systems. Can anyone explain why this is happening? The only "problem" it causes is that the first time I want to boot into Windows after a kernel upgrade, I have to figure out which of the detected Windows bootloaders is the active one. I can figure that out with fdisk when Linux reboots after the kernel update.

Hi,

try using "Boot Repair", you can tell it exactly what OS you want to boot first.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1895

I recommend downloading and creating a disk as it functions better when fully booted as its own OS (it is based on LXDE).

Regards Wolfman

Thanks for the interest and suggestions. There doesn't seem to be any "repair" needed. The grub.conf file created during each update works just fine, with ZorinOS as the default, and two "Windows 7 (loader)" entries somewhere down below. One of the disks shown as a Windows disk, though, is the primary boot disk, where Zorin and GRUB are installed, and the other is the disk where the active Windows 7 actually resides. I can't easily tell which is which when the grub screen first appears, because it doesn't identify the disk from which Linux will boot. As long as I just boot into Linux and check with fdisk, I can easily tell which Windows entry is for the active system, and use that entry when I need to use Windows. Ergo, it barely qualifies as an inconvenience. If I knew how to fix it, I guess I would, but I'm actually more interested in learning its cause.

The drive with Zorin and GRUB on it was used in 2009 to test the Windows 7 Release Candidate. I formatted it with GParted before installing Zorin 6 on it, but I'm presuming that the small hidden partition created by the Release Candidate was not deleted, and that's why that disk is still identified has having Windows 7 on it. That partition does not show up in an fdisk listing, and seems to be invisible to GParted.

@Swarf,

are your techies talking about a server version of W7????. (I don't really care, just interested thats all!!.)

Regards Wolfman