Out away from the hyped convience of windows things are sometimes more difficult, but then there's that freedom thing.
It is hard to start anew learning from a place of little knowledge. But you started like everyone else in linux because you weren't satisfied with mere convience.
I hope you don't quit and I know for myself that after awhile I realized that no matter how difficult things sometimes were there was no going back. Maybe BG & the gov will eventually get us all to go back?
Have you looked at the forum at www.linuxquestions.com ? They have a larger user base than this site and there are a great deal of posts on sata drive problems.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...t=sata+knoppix

The big commercial software Corporation will take your $ and provide you with dependence.
This here isn't about profits. So I might be just pissing you off with my idealism yet you are here at a user forum telling us you want to give up. Don't give up but if you do know that you are saying Gates & $$ wins for you.
When I was starting out someone that helped me had this tag line for a signature (it always made me laugh even when I didn't want to) "The trick is not minding that it hurts"