Serial ATA (SATA) chipsets - Linux support status
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html
Problem: Serial ATA (also known as S-ATA or SATA) chipsets are rapidly replacing legacy "parallel ATA" (PATA, i.e., regular ATA/133) chipsets - but many Linux installers' kernels don't yet support many Serial ATA chipsets. If yours isn't supported, you have an installation obstacle. SUSE Linux 9.3 and later's installation kernel, Fedora Core 3 and later's, CentOS 4.1 and later's, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and later, Gentoo Linux 2004.3 and later's, Knoppix 3.7 and later's, Debian 3.1/sarge and later's (especially when started with the "bf2.6 boot flavour" boot image), Slackware 10.2 w/test26.s boot option, Xandros Desktop OS 3.0 and later's, Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) Linux 5.04 "hoary hedgehog" and later's, Vector Linux 5.1 and later's, Libranet 3.0 and later's, MEPIS Linux 3.3.1 and later's, Kanotix 2005-03 and later's, Linspire 5.0 and later's, PCLinux OS preview .81 and later's, ArkLinux's, and Mandriva Linux 2005 and later's all have a good selection of the required drivers. Scott Kveton's Debian netinst image does, likewise - see Links/Resources.
Note: There is no such thing as a distribution or its installer (generically) "having SATA support" (or not). Please send anyone speaking in such terms to this page. (Some SATA chipsets have been supported since practically forever, as their programming interfaces are unchanged from PATA predecessors. Others are brand-new and require new drivers from scratch.)
There are three workaround options:
1. Switch the motherboard BIOS back to "legacy ATA mode" (parallel ATA = PATA). Complete a Linux installation. Fetch or build a kernel with support for your chipset. Switch the BIOS setting back. (Potential catch: It's claimed that Dell Optiplex GX270 and Dell Precision Workstation 360 desktop units, using Intel ICH5 SATA-I chipsets, don't support switching to legacy ATA mode. This might be true of some others.)
2. Rebuild your installer using kernel 2.4.27 or later, which includes libata, desirable since it adds many new chipsets and gives a (potential, subject to physical read limits, etc.) ~10M/s speed boost to some others compared to the quite slow 2.4.x drivers/ide set.
3. Temporarily add a regular PATA drive to your system. Install Linux onto that. Fetch or build a kernel with support for your chipset. Migrate your system to the SATA drives.
now if i was working with linux or unix before maybe i'd understand some of that nonesence, but fact is, i never used it so i cant make my own kernel, nor do i know what a PATA is, and that legacy does not work
any OTHER bright ideas?