Timothy Murphy wrote:
I honestly expected to be shown simple, likely to occur, scenariosLets say I have a single drive dual boot system. The 1st two primary partitions are Windows. The rest of the partitions on the drive are for Linux. The 1st primary (C:) is full. The second (D:) is barely used. I buy a new drive and, using a partitioning tool (e.g. PartitionMagic), I create a new primary on the second drive and copy all my stuff from the 2nd partition on the 1st drive to it. I delete the 2nd partition on the 1st drive and expand the 1st partition into the new free space. Now, for Windows, my C: and D: drives are intact and C: is no longer full. D: is on my new drive. However, for Linux, /dev/hda3 has become /dev/hda2. With the LABEL= approach the system will still boot. With hardcoded devices it wont.
where LABELs are helpful,
but all the examples that have been suggested
are ones I cannot imagine a non-guru like me ever encountering.
It doesn't take much of an imagination to come up with other scenarios that would be even more disruptive to the partition numbers. For example, re-arranging primary and logical partitions because one needs to adjust the space allocations or the system layout. Basically, the LABEL= paradigm gives you a level of indirection for devices -- a symbolic name instead of a hardcoded device address. This is generally considered a good thing and a more flexible approach to system design and administration.
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