Methods and apparatus for associating partitions in a computing device are disclosed. An example method includes, loading an operating system (O/S) kernel partition (kernel partition) and identifying one or more root filesystem (rootfs) partitions that are compatible with the loaded kernel partition. In the example method, the one or more compatible rootfs partitions are identified by comparing a set of compatibility bits of the loaded kernel partition with respective sets of compatibility bits of a plurality of rootfs partitions of the computing device. The example method still further includes selecting a rootfs partition from the one or more identified compatible rootfs partitions and loading the selected rootfs partition.