Bootup doesn't follow /etc/fstab

Question

Good morning,

I have a media server that has a total of 22 drives. OS, OS Backup and then the media drives. This is Ubuntu 15.10. I have utilized the UUID for setting up the /etc/fstab file. When the system reboots it appears that the assignments in the fstab file are ignored. My drives are all randomly connected to different directories.

These 4 Primary Drives are my Music, Movies, TV-Shows and Pictures

/dev/sdn
/dev/sdq
/dev/sds
/dev/sdt

as show in /etc/fstab.

But upon reboot, they, along with others, don't match what is in the /etc/fstab file.

===============

blkid:

/dev/sdn1: LABEL="PICTURES" UUID="1f3a0b93-f7f9-4aaf-8f7a-c66be69b1312" 

/dev/sdq1: LABEL="MOVIES-BACKUP" UUID="eb6fd032-e639-44d9-bc9c-ed0797faf051"

/dev/sds1: LABEL="PICTURE-BACKUP" UUID="9a5a09a8-9358-464a-8d6c-2e4decea2d5d" 

/dev/sdt1: LABEL="DOCUMENT-BACKUP" UUID="14d2f3a3-c6f9-4c95-b538-2ecd2bcb7dde" 

=====

Snapshot of key drives from /etc/fstab

 /dev/sds1 TVSHOWS 3TB

UUID=5260aa48-e679-4573-92bb-65c79c089dad /media/mediaserver/TVSHOWS  ext4 defaults 0 0

/dev/sdt1 MOVIES 3TB

UUID=d2cbe3e9-ae46-4e64-8cb8-a852e1102ba5 /media/mediaserver/MOVIES   ext4 defaults 0 0

/dev/sdq1 MUSIC 4TB

UUID=a92f755b-a307-44d2-a5ee-82288e6d471d /media/mediaserver/MUSIC    ext4 defaults 0 0

/dev/sdn1 PICTURES 3TB

UUID=1f3a0b93-f7f9-4aaf-8f7a-c66be69b1312       /media/mediaserver/PICTURES             ext4

==================

Snapshot from mount

/dev/sds1 on /media/mediaserver/TVSHOWS-SPLIT type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sdt1 on /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/MUSIC type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sdq1 on /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/PICTURES type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sdn1 on /media/mediaserver/PICTURES type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)

==================

df -h

/dev/sde1       1.8T  1.8T     0 100% /media/mediaserver/STANDBY/MUSIC

/dev/sdf1       1.8T  1.1T  683G  61% /media/mediaserver/MOVIES-MASTER

/dev/sdi1       3.6T  7.6G  3.4T   1% /media/mediaserver/MUSIC

/dev/sdg1       2.7T  1.4T  1.3T  53% /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/TVSHOWS

/dev/sdk1       2.7T  2.0T  655G  75% /media/mediaserver/STANDBY/PICTURES

/dev/sdn1       2.7T  299G  2.3T  12% /media/mediaserver/PICTURES

/dev/sdl1       2.7T   24G  2.6T   1% /media/mediaserver/DOCUMENTS

/dev/sdm1       2.7T   73M  2.6T   1% /media/mediaserver/STANDBY/SYSTEM-IMAGES

/dev/sdc1       2.7T  1.7T  875G  67% /media/mediaserver/TVSHOWS

/dev/sdd1       2.7T  1.5T  1.1T  57% /media/mediaserver/MOVIES

/dev/sdh1       2.7T   21G  2.6T   1% /media/mediaserver/STANDBY/DOCUMENTS

/dev/sds1       2.7T   73M  2.6T   1% /media/mediaserver/TVSHOWS-SPLIT

/dev/sdv1       2.7T  2.5T  149G  95% /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/MOVIES

/dev/sdu1       2.7T  1.7T  939G  65% /media/mediaserver/SYSTEM-IMAGES

/dev/sdb1       459G   70M  435G   1% /media/mediaserver/SYSTEM-SDB-DRV

/dev/sdt1       2.7T   14G  2.6T   1% /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/MUSIC

/dev/sdj1       3.6T  1.7T  1.8T  50% /media/mediaserver/STANDBY/TVSHOWS

/dev/sdq1       1.8T  301G  1.5T  18% /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/PICTURES

/dev/sdo1       1.8T  276G  1.5T  16% /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/DOCUMENTS

/dev/sdr1       1.8T  1.4T  357G  80% /media/mediaserver/BACKUPS/SYSTEM-IMAGES

/dev/sdp1       3.6T  2.5T  973G  73% /media/mediaserver/MOVIES-UPDATE

Answer 1

Don't believe the "drive-letters", they could change easily. Mounting in fstab using UUID is the correct way and you did that already. You also could mount using partition-labels but you must make sure that every partition has a unique label. The fstab-entries would look like this:

/dev/disk/by-label/DATA  /media/mediaserver/DATA  ext4  defaults  0  0
/dev/disk/by-label/MUSIC  /media/mediaserver/MUSIC  ext4  defaults  0  0

This way would be less confusing with your large number of drives. Open your file-manager and browse to /dev/disk/by-label and you will find all your partitions listed by their label. Partitions which are not labeled are not listed in this directory.