Partition Display Error with Multiple Drives of Identical Make/Model/Size

[Animo78]

Good day,

First of all I'm a pretty huge fan of Pop!-OS with Cosmic so far.
Unfortunately several days back I got an accident, where I overwritten my Windows Partition, with all my personal documents.
Yes I know I should have backed it up!
But I was cleaning out my NAS and put it on my home computer during cleaning.
Since I had some time to spare, I decided to reinstall POP!-OS 24.02 Cosmic at the same time, since I'm fairly new with Linux and messed up my last installation!
Hey Only way to learn is, F*up, try to fix it and if that doesn't work, try from scratch.

I'm pretty paranoid about my Drives, so I checked, double checked and triple checked my drives and partitions.
After which I did a clean install from the installer.
During the first initial boot I noticed, that I had 2 Pop!-OS records in the boot loader, instead of 1 and a Windows.
I panicked, took some deep breaths and had the realization I lost my complete Windows Partition.
Tried data-recovery but it was already to late.
It sucks but live goes on.

I did a bit of research and I found out the culprit:
https://iso.pop-os.org/24.04/amd64/nvidia/22/pop-os_24.04_amd64_nvidia_22.iso

In this image I got a partition manager open.
As you can see its partition: Partition /DEV/NVME1N1
IMG_20251226_150752.jpg – Partition /DEV/NVME1N1

In this image, it's the same partition with the installer but it now has an other name.
MG_20251226_152057.jpg – partition /DEV/NVME0N1

And the last image I updated with apt update && apt upgrade before I started the installer.
IMG_20251226_154912.jpg – Partition /DEV/NVME1N1

Both are M.2 Drives, pretty much identically.
Hope it's an isolated incident, but I thought after searching for a while, why it happened, I would pas on the message.

[jacobgkau]

Sorry to hear about your data. I'm having a little trouble understanding the issue and how it led to this data loss.

First of all, /dev/sd# or /dev/nvme#n# names are always subject to change based on what order your hardware/firmware happens to initialize each drive when powering on and booting up. When you're running commands, you should always use /dev/disk/by-id/... or /dev/disk/by-uuid/..., for that reason.

Since the installer doesn't display UUIDs, you're left with only the friendly (but not always consistent) number names, or the partition layouts. In your photos, it looks like you're saying the Pop!_OS installation shows as unused space on a more recent version of the installer, while a Windows partition still shows as NTFS as expected? Or was the bug something else?

[jacobgkau]

If you're saying Disks actually showed the Pop!_OS drive as /dev/nvme1n1 on the same boot as the installer showed it as /dev/nvme0n1, was Disks showing the NTFS partition on /dev/nvme0n1?

[Animo78]

My apologies, seems the last picture was the wrong one, I replaced it with the correct one..

What I understand with Linux is that

In a typical Linux system, the order of NVMe devices like /dev/nvme0n1 and /dev/nvme1n1 is generally stable as long as you don't make hardware changes, but there are important caveats and details to understand.

So I booted from USB drive with Ventoy and the image mentioned.
I followed the normal installation, during the installation I checked with "custom" which Partition was my windows and which was my Pop!-OS Partition.
Then I canceled and did a "Clean Install" on the Pop!-OS drive.
After boot my Windows Partition was replaced by an other Pop!-OS Partition.
I didn't understand it, so I did some digging.

I used Disks for the First image as reference.
The Second picture is in the installer, with "custom" during installation process.
I closed the installer and did a Sudo Apt update && Sudo Apt upgrade.
Reopened the installer again, now the /dev/nvme0n1 and /dev/nvme1n1 are switched, as you can see in the Third image.
No hardware changes where made.

I hope this clarifies my case.