according to:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archit.../ARM/HowToQemu
the qemu ARM variety of processor doesn't have disk support ... you need to tell it to boot off an NFS volume:
qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel zImage-versatile -append root="/dev/nfs nfsroot=<host-ip>:/mnt/ARM_FS rw ip=dhcp" \
-net nic,vlan=0 -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap0,script=./qemu-ifup
(where <host-ip> is your local host ip, and /mnt/ARM_FS is the nfs share) or similar ...
not sure if that helps.
Jon