Comment 4 for bug 17366

(In reply to comment #3)
> There already exists a facility for loading the correct driver via hotplug, so
> no configuration changes (manual or automatic) should be necessary.
>
> Was this only a problem for you during bootup (i.e., could you use hdparm after
> booting successfully?)? If so, this is a duplicate of bug #11646.
>
> Otherwise, please send "lspci" and "lspci -n" output to show us which controller
> you have.

The problem I and many others on the ubuntu forum have had seems to be specific
to PC's with and SATA controller (see the forum list for detail:
shttp://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-24046.html).

This is a problem during *and* after boot. My problem was fixed using the quoted
solution i.e. add the relevant ide controller module (piix in my sace) to both
/etc/modules (before ide-generic and ide-disk) and /etc/hotplug/blacklist.