A first-time post for me: I've never had a problem that was so serious.
I've had Wheezy installed for many months now with default kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64. Following a routine apt-get upgrade, the kernel cannot detect any of the internal drives. After many
"ata#: reset failed, giving up" and
"udevd: timeout" errors, I am dropped to an initramfs Busybox prompt that cannot see any drives (fdisk -l sees nothing).
Interestingly, I *can* boot into the old Squeeze kernel (2.7.x). >From booting under the old kernel, I have tried:
# apt-get remove linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64
# apt-get install linux-image-amd64
# cd /boot; update-initramfs -k 3.2.0-4-amd64 -u
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get dist-upgrade
All to no avail. Interestingly, even the Debian 7.5 netinst CD will not see the drives, and asks me to select a driver (it makes no suggestions). When I drop to a prompt in recovery mode (another BusyBox prompt), fdisk -l does not see any drives.
There is nothing exotic about my drives: they are four Western Digital 2 TB internal hard drives.
This one has me stumped. I hope someone can help. Please let me know if there is additional information I should post, or if there is somewhere else that I should be posting instead. I would appreciate any leads.