Well, it has to format as ext2 before it can make it ext3, so it sounds like something is working, at least.
The sata might be the problem, there might be some motherboard chipsets out there that aren't fully supported yet, but I dunno.
You might try running "mke2fs -j <drive name, like /dev/hdc3 or whatever>" as root. If it hangs or takes a really long time, you might try it with -v as well, to see more info. Anyway, if it's failing to add the journal (which it sounds like it is), running that program from a console will hopefully give a more detailed error message in the output. It also might succeed where the gui failed.
I guess there's also a chance that it might actually be formatting the drive properly, but that it incorrectly shows it as ext2. I don't know how you could check that, just an idea.
anyway, hope that helps
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