Comment 1 for bug 569645

Hi,
  I think this is the same as #261178 I first reported in Intrepid - but I actually think it's the correct
behavior - let me explain.

  As of recent kernels the drivers for different devices initialize in parallel for speed; in the old days
it would check each device, wait for the drives on that to start up and then move onto the next one - these
days it does different controllers at the same time - in your case I suspect your SATA is on one controller
and your IDE on a different one. This is a LOT faster, but which one is sda depends on which is fastest.

Having said that the answer is supposed to be that you should be able to use UUID (or labels if you prefer)
everywhere and it shouldn't matter if it's called sda or sdb

So, I suggest you add your /etc/fstab and anything similar to this bug report after switching them to UUID or labels.

Dave