Honestly I don't know whether this is an issue with HAL or DBUS or the kernel but a device node in /dev is only created on bootup (and the drive is on). Once the device node is there you can hotplug to your hearts content, however if you turn on the drive after boot neither dbus-monitor --system shows anything and hal-device-manager doesn't show the device and the device node isn't made. Thanks.
I think this is a udev issue.
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