Comment 3 for bug 377613

Having now read up a bit on UUIDs, it seems to me that if an existing partition is being reformatted, it SHOULD retain the existing UUID. Anything referring to that particular partition by UUID will then still safely be able to find it if necessary. Although at one level a reformatted filesystem might be thought of as new and thus needing a new UUID, at the physical level, it's still the same part of the same disc, so is still the same filesystem, albeit wiped clean.

It makes sense to allocate a new UUID for a newly-created filesystem, but to prevent difficulties after failed installs, pre-existing filesystems ought to retain their original UUID. I note from the man page that tune2fs can be used to set a chosen UUID for a filesystem, so there's no technical reason why this couldn't be done. And then someone in a disastrous situation such as mine could get working again with fewer problems.