Well. With most SCSI drives you have to use the SCSI controller to low level format them before they can be used. I have never used a SATA drive yet so I don't know if you have to do this for them of not.
From what I know all drives must be Low Level formated before their first use. IDE drives are usually low level formated by the manufacturer before retailers get them, so you should never have too. SCSI drives normally are not Low Level formatted and must be Low Level formatted before they can be used. As for where SATA stands, I don't know.
If you have never used the drive before you may want to use your SATA controller to Low Level format your drive.
If you have a dos boot disk with the dos program fdisk on it, boot up that dos floppy and see if fdisk can see that SATA drives. With SCSI drives I know that fdisk can see and partition them since that is what we do when we get a new server at work. We use Novell NetWare and it boots off a dos FAT16 partition before it does it's equivalent of "loadlin" to boot the actual Novell OS. ANYWays the point I was trying to make was if DOS's fdisk can see the SATA drive the problem is probably with linux if it can't either then the problem is most likely with your SATA controller configuration.
Hope I helped more than I confused. And that my info is right.
[edit]
WARNING: Low Level formating will erase
everything on the drive, just in case you didn't know that...only hope i wasn't to late.
. But the same may not hold true for linux. Don't know why not since they all are based on the same kernel, but then again I'm a noob for a reason.
