Fixed (hardisk) device names?

[Arnd Vehling <av@nethead.de>]

Hello,

does anyone know how to fix the device name on a debian linux
system? For example. If i have two IDE hardisks, the devices will
be named like this.

/dev/hda
/dev/hdb

If i now must remove the first harddisk (/dev/hda) the second (/dev/hdb)
will be renamed to (/dev/hda) after the reboot. As i want /dev/hdb to be
a mirror of /dev/hda and used as failover disk _without_ opening the
case and tampering with the IDE bus setup, i want linux to keep the name
/dev/hdb for the drive no matter what happens.

Is this possible?

Another question. How can i copy two identical discs _including_ the boot
block? "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb" doesnt do it and there are no raw
devices on linux AFAIK.

thx,

  Arnd