SATA problems (Abit IP35-Pro)

[Isaac Mushinsky]

I am setting up a new system with Abit IP35-Pro (ich9r), 2 WD SATA drives on
the controller. There is also a SATA DVDRW to boot from.
With the default SATA setup (SATA/IDE) the system cannot find any SATA
drive. I was able to boot the install disk, attaching an old IDE CDROM, but
still could not make it see the hard drive.

If I set SATA controller to AHCI, the system boots (although with some ACPI
errors), and I was able to install. However, fdisk thinks that the geometry
is "incorrect", and insists on a different one (it says the drives have
476gb rather than 500gb).

I can install with this AHCI setup, but have no idea what the implications
are. Is there a known fix for SATA/IDE? Or is AHCI better?