eSATA hotplug not working well with Nautilus

Hi,
I have an external eSATA disk I use for backups.
I am fully able to use it from the command line, so I'm reasonably happy ;)
Problem is Nautilus is working just half-way:
If I power-up with the disk attached it *is* recognized and Nautilus *does* know it is a remoable disk because it shows the "umount" buttons beside its mount-points (under /media).
I can detach the disk just clicking on them and then detaching the drive.
At this point (correctly) the partitions disappear from the [Places] menu. If I have an open window on "Computer" the icons do *not* automagically disappear, even after refresh; I don't know if it's significant. Any subsequent opening of "Computer" does not show the (now unavailable) partitions.
So far, so good.
Problem is if I reattach the drive (or attach it after boot) nothing is displayed anymore in Nautilus.

The system detects There is a new disk:
Aug 3 18:53:44 wiki3A kernel: [20639.271146] ata6: hard resetting link
Aug 3 18:53:49 wiki3A kernel: [20644.748124] ata6: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Aug 3 18:53:49 wiki3A kernel: [20644.749880] ata6.00: ATA-8: STM3500418AS, CC35, max UDMA/133
Aug 3 18:53:49 wiki3A kernel: [20644.749887] ata6.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.751321] ata6.00: configured for UDMA/133
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.751340] ata6: EH complete
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.751555] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA STM3500418AS CC35 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.753873] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors: (500 GB/465 GiB)
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.753911] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.753975] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.754121] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors: (500 GB/465 GiB)
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.754743] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.754820] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.754829] sdb: sdb1 sdb2
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.770535] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Aug 3 18:53:50 wiki3A kernel: [20644.770680] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

and:
mauro@wiki3A:~$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

   8 0 312571224 sda
   8 1 10485760 sda1
   8 2 151041024 sda2
   8 3 1 sda3
   8 4 3717120 sda4
   8 5 43937743 sda5
   8 6 4883728 sda6
   8 7 98494483 sda7
   8 16 488386584 sdb
   8 17 244196001 sdb1
   8 18 244188000 sdb2
mauro@wiki3A:~$

The eSATA drive is /dev/sdb.

They are, however, visible neither in [Places] nor in "Computer".
I can mount the partitions manually, but they will *not* be under /media and they will not look as detachable.

What am I doing wrong?
Did I hit a bug?

TiA
ZioNemo