The device names are associated to hard disks or magneto-optical according to their SCSI IDs. Other SCSI devices, like CD-ROMs, tape drives, etc. are assigned other device names, so they don't matter. In your case, if you unplug your zip drive, your sdc device (hard disk 1) will become sdb. I'd suggest you change the scsi ID of your hard disk 1 from 2 to 1. Get in the habit of assigning low values to fixed hard disks and high values to other removable devices, that'll reduce the chance of this kind of problem occurring again. I've had this problem in the past and I think I can help you. I don't use LVM, so I don't know if that part of your setup will be affected, read the documentation on LVM to see if this kind of change affect it. Here is what I would do: 0. Unplug the zip drive and change the scsi ID of drive from 2 to 1. 1. Boot the system into single user mode linux S root=/dev/sdb5 2. Re-mount your root file system and /boot as read-write mount -n -o remount,rw / mount -n -o remount,rw /boot 3. Edit your /etc/lilo.conf and change the "sdc" instances with "sdb" 4. Run mk_initrd (if you use initrd file) followed by lilo Example: mk_initrd && /sbin/lilo 5. Reboot. Rafael