Comment 19 for bug 213639

You're right depmod -a only cares about the loaded kernel.

But you can do that manually (it's probably the easiest way), you just need to add two lines to /lib/modules/2.6.24-17-generic/modules.dep:

/lib/modules/2.6.24-17-generic/kernel/drivers/ide/pci/via82cxxx.ko: /lib/modules/2.6.24-17-generic/kernel/drivers/ide/ide-core.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.24-17-generic/kernel/drivers/ide/pci/amd74xx.ko: /lib/modules/2.6.24-17-generic/kernel/drivers/ide/ide-core.ko

You probably want to use the -k option of update-initramfs too