Back in December, I wrote about setting UUIDs so multiple disks could be mounted in the same place using /etc/fstab.
I’ve since decided that was dumb. Disks should have unique UUIDs - Linux may use that for more than just mounting the file system. Luckily, there is a better option: the disk label.
Mounting a disk using the disk label is very similar to mounting using UUIDs. First, you need to give the disk a label. I think you can do that when you mkfs, but it’s pretty cheap to do it after you’ve already bulit the file system using: e2label /dev/sdb1 mylabel (substituting whatever device you want for /dev/sdb1 and whatever label you want for mylabel. This will work for ext2, ext3 and ext4 - if you’re using another file system, it should have its own label utility.)
Then, rather than specifying UUID= in /etc/fstab, specify: LABEL=mylabel
Your disk will mount automatically, but still have a unique ID. Sounds better to me.
Sun has a useful tutorial at: http://wikis.sun.com/display/BigAdmin/Using+Disk+Labels+on+Linux+File+Systems