LinuxQuestions.org - can't boot - i/o error on device hde1

i am setting up a home server with an IDE drive (/dev/hda) as the boot device. /dev/hda1 is the / partition and /dev/hda2 is swap.

i installed ubuntu server (kernel 2.6.15) on there and updated it and rebooted and installed vmware server, etc. it was fine. i believe i rebooted twice during that whole setup process, but maybe only once.

i have a rocketraid 1640 sata card in there, with 4 500 GB sata drives in a raid1-0. tonight i built the driver from the source that i downloaded and did an insmod ./hpt734.ko - it completed without errors. i did an fdisk /dev/sda and it saw my 1000 GB "disk" which i was then able to partition. i made 1 partition, wrote the table to disk, and rebooted.

on reboot, the bios raid utility detects the drive, and ubuntu starts to boot. it says it's loading the initrd image, etc. then i get the following error:

buffer i/o error on device hde1

that scrolls down for several pages, and sometimes it is hdk1 instead of hde1. then it just stops and doesn't get any further.

i think for some reason the system is trying to boot off the sata drives that make up the raid, rather than off the ide boot drive. i can't figure out why though. i'm a slackware/lilo guy, so i'm still trying to figure out a way to get a look at how grub thinks it should be starting the system. i found the hde=noboot boot option and i'm currently halfway through booting into the ubuntu live cd (without this option even the live cd freezes).

any ideas?