> The drive might not exist, but the device file surely does. Try deleting
> the device file and/or changing the drive setting to "no drive" or
> "auto" in the bios. Do you use udev? If so, try setting in
> /etc/conf.d/rc RC_DEVICES="udev" and RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no".

There is no option for RC_DEVICES="udev" in my /etc/conf.d/rc file, do
you mean replace the line
RC_DEVFSD_STARTUP="yes"
with
RC_DEVICES="udev"

Here it is in full

# /etc/conf.d/rc:
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/conf.d/rc,v 1.13 2004/02/26 18:01:29 azarah Exp $

#
# Global config file for the Gentoo RC System
#
# NOTE: most of these are not in use yet!!
#


# This is the amount of tty's used in most of the rc-scripts (like
# consolefont, numlock, etc

RC_TTY_NUMBER=11

# Set to "yes" if you want the rc system to try and start services
# in parallel for slight speed improvement.

RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP="no"

# Set to "yes" if the default behaviour of at least one net.*
# service starting beside net.lo is NOT enouth to consider
# the 'net' dependency up and running.

RC_NET_STRICT_CHECKING="no"

# Set to "yes" if you want to save /dev to a tarball on shutdown
# and restore it on startup. This is useful if you have a lot of
# custom device nodes that udev do not handle/know about.
# (ONLY used by UDEV enabled systems!)

RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="yes"

# Set to "yes" if you want devfsd to start upon bootup. This is
# the default for Gentoo.
# Set to "no" only if you understand the full implications. A
# number of files may need to be altered (i.e. /etc/inittab,
# /etc/fstab, etc.).
# Also note that it does _NOT_ start for UDEV enabled systems,
# even if RC_DEVFSD_STARTUP="yes" ...

RC_DEVFSD_STARTUP="yes"

# Set to "yes" if stop-daemon() should always retry killing the
# service if it fails the first time.

RC_RETRY_KILL="yes"


# Set the amount of seconds stop-daemon() should wait between
# retries. $RC_RETRY_KILL should be set to "yes".

RC_RETRY_TIMEOUT=1


# Set the amount of times stop-daemon() should try to kill
# a service before giving up. $RC_RETRY_KILL should be set to "yes".

RC_RETRY_COUNT=5


# Set to "yes" if stop-daemon() should fail if the service
# is marked as started, but not actually running on stop.

RC_FAIL_ON_ZOMBIE="no"



#
# Internal configuration variables
#
# NB: These are for advanced users, and you should really
# know what you are doing before changing them!
#


# rc-scripts dep-cache directory
#
# NOTE: Do not remove the next line, as its needed by the baselayout ebuild!
#
# svcdir="/var/lib/init.d"

svcdir="/var/lib/init.d"


# Should we mount $svcdir as a tmpfs or ramfs for some speed
# increase for slower machines, or for the more extreme setups ?

svcmount="no"


# FS type that should be used for $svcdir. Note that you need
# $svcmount above set to "yes" for this to work ... Currently
# "tmpfs" and "ramfs" are supported, with "tmpfs" the default.

svcfstype="tmpfs"


# Size of $svcdir in KB

svcsize=2048