Waka,
Thanks for your advice. I tried it and it still does not work. The problem is more the device itself - not the mount point. The error message says that the "special device" /dev/sda2 does not exist.

Basically I need to figure out how to get the SATA device recognized by the OS, as Knoppix 4.0 did sucessfully.
Here are some interesting lines from dmesg:

Code:
Loading iSCSI transport class v2.0-724.<7>ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.00ac6
ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ P0 P1 IDE IDE ]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x1F0 ctl 0x3F6 bmdma 0xF000 irq 14
ata2: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0xF008 irq 15
scsi0 : ata_piix
ata1: SRST failed (status 0xFF)
ata1: SRST failed (err_mask=0x100)
ata1: softreset failed, retrying in 5 secs
ata1: SRST failed (status 0xFF)
ata1: SRST failed (err_mask=0x100)
ata1: softreset failed, retrying in 5 secs
ata1: SRST failed (status 0xFF)
ata1: SRST failed (err_mask=0x100)
ata1: reset failed, giving up
scsi1 : ata_piix
ata2.00: ATAPI, max UDMA/33
ata2.01: ATAPI, max UDMA/33
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2.01: configured for UDMA/33