If you are using SATA drives, be aware that your drive designation may change when you upgrade to kernel 2.6.8.1, as it did for this user:
After an upgrade to kernel26-scsi version 2.6.8.1-1 from version 2.6.7-1 my system panicked on boot because my /boot/grub/menu.lst file listed my root SATA drive as "hde" instead of "sda" which the 2.6.8 kernel configuration strangely now requires. If I had known that this would happen I would have modified my /boot/grub/menu.lst file as well as my /etc/fstab with the new designation.