init not loading? why?

I recently purchased a new laptop HDD, tossed three partitions onto
the drive (/, /usr, and swap), newfs'ed them with UFS2, mounted the
new drive as a umass device, copied files over (tar), and now when I
boot with my new drive, the kernel is having problems launching
/sbin/init.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why it's not
loading.  After dropping to DDB, I don't see it in the process list
and I'm not getting any output other than notice that the kernel is
starting /sbin/init.

Is there some kind of subtlety I'm missing someplace regarding UFS2?
I'm still alive with my old drive, but it's clunking pretty loudly and
I don't think it's going to live much longer.  :(

-sc

-- 
Sean Chittenden