renaming hard drives (sdc to sdb) on the fly

ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
kernel: [2761026.198796] ata2: soft resetting link
kernel: [2761031.226669] ata2.00: disabled
kernel: [2761031.226720] ata2: EH complete
kernel: [2761031.226753] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK,SUGGEST_OK

After receiving the error above, I couldn't access /dev/sdb anymore.
Not wanting to restart the server, I rescanned for the device using echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan and it readded the drive as /dev/sdc.

From what I have found, I need to use echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 3 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi, "3" being the SCSI ID which corresponds to sdb.

Everything nice up to the point I execute the command and get -bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument.
All the solutions point to using this method, but I am unable to. Any other method available?

Debian 5.0.8 - 2.6.26-1-686