You don´t need a special driver since SATA ist logically compatible to normal PATA. Even if not, since you´re booting from it, normal BIOS calls have to work. This would mean you have a slow disk for installing (no busmastering) but that doesn´t really matter if it works. after installing you can get a proper kernel with the proper drivers (if they´re available)
The only scenarios you need a special driver for, is either when you use some form of RAID on your bootdisk (imho a bad idea, but that´s just me) or a scsi-adapter which is unsupported by a normal linux kernel. In that case you use initrd, also known as initial ramdisk.
It´s the initrd file on your bootdisk. There are howtos on how to create one yourself with your special drivers.
