You said this is using a sata drive right?

Mabey your sata controller is not being supported by your kernel.

Can you find out exactly what brand and model the sata controller is? It is possible that you are running into a problem because the sata controller is not being properly recognized by the kernel. If this is the case, it would indeed cause kernel panics when you try to use it.

If you tell us what sata controller it is we can perhaps figure out if its supported, or if it requires some kind of hack to get to work. If it is the problem and simply cant work, it is also possible to just throw in another cheap card and get you up and running.



You might try a slackware install..... you can choose which kernel you want to use to boot. I have seen a few cases where choosing a differnt kernel on has made the difference.