Wrong partition boots occasionally

[birchy]

I have a fresh install of LMDE 201204 on a 1TB HDD which is partitioned as follows:

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50GB Primary (O.S.)
4GB Primary (Swap)
10GB Primary (O.S. Clone)
867GB Extended/Logical (Data)

After installing my preferred apps and settings, I made a clone of the main O.S. partition into the 10GB partition using gParted's copy/paste. The result is an exact clone and both drives now have identical UUID's. What I have found is that on seemingly random occasions, the *clone* partition boots instead of the main one. This kind of makes sense because both partitions have the same UUID, however I would of expected the partitions to be detected sequentially rather than randomly. My fstab looks like this:

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# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc	/proc	proc	defaults	0	0

# /dev/sda1 (LINUX)
UUID=a99f1ce2-1c12-41fe-8f68-54cf59ad37be	/	ext4	rw,errors=remount-ro,noatime	0	1

# /dev/sda2 (SWAP)
UUID=bb064be5-8cc1-4659-a6e7-d9b4034aadb1	none	swap	sw	0	0

# /dev/sda3 (CLONE_LMDE201204)

# /dev/sda4 (Extended partition)

# /dev/sda5 (Logical partition - DATA)
UUID=1ca16d31-a971-4e4c-882b-b8d836d63652 /media/STORAGE ext4 defaults,noatime	0 2

How can I prevent my clone partition from booting? I'm wondering if I should add an entry into fstab, but give it a none-existent mount point. The theory is that *if* it tries to boot first, it will fail and therefore default to the other partition with the same UUID. Does that sound like a plausible solution? Or is there a better way, other than changing the UUID?

[mintybits]

Have you considered giving them different UUIDs and using the grub-reboot option? I have not used this and I don't know whether this would suit your need or not.
http://wiki.debian.org/GrubReboot

[birchy]

It seems that it's possible to boot by LABEL rather than UUID. I did consider using /dev/sd* but that's not very reliable as udev seems to change paths as often as the weather.

About to try booting my clone partition. If that works, I'll put a label on my primary partition with gparted and job's a good'un.

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#UUID=a99f1ce2-1c12-41fe-8f68-54cf59ad37be	/	ext4	rw,errors=remount-ro,noatime	0	1
LABEL=CLONE_LMDE201204	/	ext4	rw,errors=remount-ro,noatime	0	1

Of course, the other option is to put the clone on a removable drive.

[äxl]

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... nd-837080/