[Problem]
You use a version of DL that is supposed to have sata support, yet after boot it does not show any sata drives (dmesg | grep sd).
[Solution]
You have to 'insmod libata' and 'insmod sata_uli' to enable the kernel module necessary to work with SATA disks. Might not work on all controllers, but i've not ran in any so far who denied cooperation. To make this easier, edit the boot configuration (manually or with webmin or some other tool, search the forum) to load this kernel module at boot time.