This is almost certainly a kernel problem. However, it is quite likely
that different distros have their kernels configured differently.
I've seen strange problems with big hard drives and 2.4.18. Actually, I lost
an entire hard-drive because I partitioned and created the fs under knoppix
(2.4.22), but was using the system under stable (2.4.18). It seems like,
somehow, 2.4.18 will not recognize more than 137GB (dmesg | grep hd will tell
you). In my case, upgrading the kernel to (at the time) 2.4.22 resolved the
problem nicely.
Again, it may be a configuration issue in the kernel, but I was in a hurry
and had to take the quickest path to solve the problem.
Regards,
Paga