OK.  Here are test results.

This is not a partition or disk problem.  This is a scsi/usb/grml problem.  The
disk is fine.  The partition table is fine.  The filesystems are fine.  The
0.9-7 CD is fine.

A similar problem happened once before on a previous grml devel release.  (Don't
you have any cheap external USB disks for testing?)

On the test PC there are 3 IDE hard drives and 1 external USB drive.  There is
no SCSI device nor any SCSI controller.  Completely SCSI-free.  Just USB 2.

Booting CD-ROM 0.9-7 with no cheatcodes gives this /proc/partitions:

major minor  #blocks  name

   7     0     704712 loop0
   3     0   30018240 hda
   3     1   30018208 hda1
   3    64    8257032 hdb
  22     0   30018240 hdc
  22     1   30018208 hdc1

Booting CD-ROM 0.9-7 with cheatcode "scsi=probe" gives this /proc/partitions:

major minor  #blocks  name

   7     0     704712 loop0
   3     0   30018240 hda
   3     1   30018208 hda1
   3    64    8257032 hdb
  22     0   30018240 hdc
  22     1   30018208 hdc1
   8     0       8192 sda

But cfdisk fails to recognize /dev/sda properly.  Something's wrong with how
grml configures the disk.  Cfdisk works fine under 2.6.18, shows all the
partitions correctly.  I am running grml off the disk right now to type this note.

Anyway, USB should not depend on SCSI probing.  There should always be USB
probing by default.