Well, the original scenario I had:
1. Disconnected secured drive
2. Run "Contacts" -> no contacts (as expected)
3. Connect secured drive
4. Run "Contacts" -> still no contacts shown

I then used the following between 3 and 4:
kill `pgrep /usr/bin/osso-addressbook`
kill `pgrep telepathy-*`
I checked that all these processes changed process ids to make sure they were killed.

After these steps - starting the "Contacts" application shows all the contacts, but not the statuses of the IM accounts (I'm logged in to them of course) and you cannot send IM messages because you are getting "Unable to perform operation - internal error" message if you try too.

Anything else should be restarted?

Encrypted contacts is a very nice ability I would like to use. Other than that this secured drive is a great second protection for my already encrypted Password safe data file.

Thanks for the help