On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:16, Artem Trunov<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This second machine also has an IDE drive, but a different
> brand, which is recognized as sdb (sda is bootable usb stick), not
> hda.

It is worth mentioning that sd and hd have nothing whatsoever to do
with the brand of drive, and they actually also have nothing to do
with what type of cable is in use.  What actually decides whether you
get sd or hd device names is which driver you are using to access that
storage.  In the past, IDE had different drivers than did SCSI and
SATA.  The IDE drivers used hd the sata and scsi drivers used sd.  The
IDE driver names related to exact positions.  I.E. hdc was ALWAYS the
secondary master.  Even if there was no primary master or slave.
Today libata is the most commonly used driver.  It includes support
for most ide and sata controllers, and libata happens to make sd
device names.  libata (and AFAIK all block storage controller drivers
using the sd namespace) just assign starting from a in the order
detected.  Which letter you get should be considered to be completely
arbitrary and volatile.  Instead of referencing /dev/sda1, reference
LABEL= or /dev/disk/by-*/*.  Those methods will be stable across
reboots and hardware changes.