Mounting USB devices with stable names

[Mike McCarty]

I have an issue which will shortly be important to me, though
in past it has not been a problem. It appears to me that it
may be a general problem in some ways.

I have for some time used an external USB hard drive. I find that
sometimes it must be mounted as /dev/sda1 and sometimes /dev/sde1,
and have consequently made two entries in my /etc/fstab, and just
live with what I have. This occurs even though the disc is always
plugged into the same USB port.

I now have a USB FLASH drive, and so this is going to be more
of a problem, as I have different file systems on those, and
have a need to specify the mount NOT to be "auto" to ascertain
the fs type, since I am overriding the default for the FLASH
drive. In any case, the FLASH drive is also not always appearing
as the same device. I don't want to have to become root and
fiddle /etc/fstab every time I try to mount the FLASH drive.

I've seen others here with what appears to be a similar problem
with running two ethernet ports, and not being able to know
which will be eth0. I wonder whether this be related.

In any case, would some please give me advice on how to handle
the "floating" USB devices?

Thanks very muchly for your time.

Mike
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