partitions not getting mounted at boot

[JD]

Tom H on December 29th, 2012 - 4:27 am wrote:
 >On 12/28/2012 01:59 PM, JD wrote:
 >> Ubuntu 12.10 with latest updates.
 >> I have 2 external drives connected to esata2 pcmcia hub.
 >> Lately, what is happening when I reboot, I get a banner
 >> that /dev/sdb1 could not be mounted, press S to skip press M to ????
 >>
 >> If press M, andlogin, I run fsck on all the partitions that were 
supposed
 >> to get mounted (they used to be mounted when I first installed 
ubuntu 12.10).
 >> fsck fails and says the device is busy.
 >> Yet it is not mounted at all.
 >> if I ls it's mountmount point as configures in fstab,
 >> no files are visible.
 >> So, why does fsck say it is busy?
 >>
 >> This is the case on all partition of both drives.
 >>
 >> Now the weird thingis that if I do
 >> mount -a
 >> then all get mounted and everything is fine.
 >> What is causing this weird behaviour??

 > Could it be that the esata drivers load too late? (Although the fact 
that they were mounted previously makes it unlikely.)

I actually turn on the external drives at least a minute or two before I 
power up the laptop.
I can actually hear then click when initialization is complete, then I 
power up the laptop.

 > What are the mountpoints that you’re using?*
 >*

in /etc/fstab, the mount points look like this:

UUID=4bfba40e-1257-4b09-9adb-c1498e8b10eb /sdb1 ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 0
UUID=cef78441-c866-492e-bc2e-41cfbf68baa9 /sdb3 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=7512-FE09 /sdb4 vfat rw,user,uid=1008,gid=1008,errors=remount-ro 0 2
UUID=cac8ee87-d20b-42ca-bc77-aabcee8b52a1 /sdb5 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 3
UUID=3CFF2EB56FA47EF0 /sdc1 ntfs 
rw,user,uid=1008,gid=1008,errors=remount-ro 0 0
UUID=644f8347-c203-46c5-8736-ef505d4dfd11 /sdc2 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=5bc5f940-7957-40aa-be2a-ac0701e4020c /sdc3 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 2
UUID=5f291879-0b2f-4849-b8fe-2acdd452d2ba /sdc4 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 3
UUID=791e12f5-523c-4403-be97-847f82497732 /sdc5 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 4