> I just hope the final debian-installer version will use a more recent > kernel that is SATA AHCI aware.
This is very unlikely now. Blame those f***** hardware manufacturers who are constantly changing hardware specifications and don't even give possibilities to circumvent the induced problems. There is no plan to use 2.6.10 in sarge as kernel transitions induce huge work to the D-I and kernel teams. In short and in french : plein le dos des modes diverses et variées dans le domaine du matériel. En particulier, SATA est la pire innovation qui doit arrivée ces dernières années, probablement...:-(