I had 3 primary partitions, hda1, hda2 [both ext2] & hda3 [fat32], and several other (not important here).
|<-- hda1-->||<-- hda2-->|<-- hda3-->|
The partitions were created in the order specified above.

After a while, I had to delete hda1 and hda2. Therefore, hda3 now became hda1 as seen from fdisk /dev/hda.
|<-- empty -->|<--hda1-->|

Then I recreated those partitions in the empty space. The problem now I see from fdisk /dev/hda is, the first two partitiones are labelled hda2 and hda3, while the 3rd FAT32 partition remains hda1 only.
|<-- hda2-->||<-- hda3-->|<-- hda1-->|
Why is it so? This is causing a lot of problems while mounting, unmounting in other distros. Can someone explain to me why is it that way, and what can I do to fix the numbering.

Thanks in advance...

I doubt you can change the numbering. They are numbered in the order they were created. So you'll have to edit the /etc/fstab to reflect the changes in the numbering.

quatsch
changing fstab wont have any effects as there will be many fstab's for each distro.
If anything, it should be done at hardware level

I really doubt there's much you can do other than sit down and edit the fstab for each distro.

Isn't there a way to change the partition numbers, at least in primary
partition space?