Hope someone can help with the following:

My SATA hdd is detected but no dev is assigned to it so I am unable to mount it.

dmesg:
<snip>
hdd: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache, UDMA(33)
libata version 1.01 loaded.
ata_piix version 1.01
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xC000 ctl 0xC402 bmdma 0xD000 irq 18
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xC800 ctl 0xCC02 bmdma 0xD008 irq 18
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:7c6b 83:7b09 84:4003 85:7c69 86:3a01 87:4003 88:207f
ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 240121728 sectors
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi0 : ata_piix
ata2: SATA port has no device. disabling.
ata2: thread exiting
scsi1 : ata_piix
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6Y120M0 Rev: 1.01
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
ohci1394: $Rev: 1172 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[16] MMIO=[fa104000-fa1047ff] Max Packet=[2048]
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller
<snip>

It's a single disk on sata port 0, no raid on a giga-byte ga-8knxp mobo. Bios is set on auto detect. Under windowsxp disk is working.

I am running slackware and kernel 2.6.4

Anybody any ideas what I can do to fix it ?? Thanks!!

Well, are you sure that you have all the SCSI modules you need loaded? O my setup I have a promise SATA raid controller. This produces a device that is considered a SCSI device (/dev/sda). From your logs, it looks like your driver is trying to do the same. I've compiled in SCSI support and the low level SATA Promise support as I boot from my SATA drive, but if you don't need to, then modules should do.

Hope this helps.