Hi,
I am wrestling with the same basic problem. My DMESG looks like this:
/dev/hda2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hda1 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto,user,rw,exec,sync 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/dvd /media/dvd subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd1 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
and these are the lines from my messages log from startup this morning:
Aug 25 10:23:36 neptune kernel: usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2 Aug 25 10:23:37 neptune kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Aug 25 10:23:37 neptune kernel: usb-storage: device found at 2
Aug 25 10:23:37 neptune kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Aug 25 10:23:37 neptune /etc/hotplug/usb.agent[8466]: need a device for this command
Aug 25 10:23:42 neptune kernel: Vendor: ST340810 Model: A Rev: 3.97
Aug 25 10:23:42 neptune kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00 Aug 25 10:23:42 neptune kernel: usb-storage: device scan complete
Aug 25 10:23:42 neptune /etc/hotplug/scsi_device.agent[8515]: FATAL: Module sd_mod not found. Aug 25 10:23:42 neptunespace /etc/hotplug/scsi_device.agent[8515]: FATAL: Module sg not found.
I have a question that may help you and would certainly save me time by experimenting on your system

. I think that my problem is that I have not enabled SCSI because I have no SCSI drives. However, the USB drive is trying to use SCSI emulation so it fails on my system. Most people on the forum talk about their USB drive turning up as /dev/sda1 or whatever. I notice that you have SCSI drives (and lots of them) - but no reference in your FSTAB to /dev/sda2 - just sda1, 3 .. 7.
Have you tried mounting /dev/sda2 to /mnt and seeing if your USB drive is there? What does your message log look like? It would be really helpful to me before I start rebuilding my kernel with SCSI support if I knew it was certainly the solution.
Cheers
Tim.