It's true, but generally speaking, the PATA interface is not yet a huge limits in the bandwidth. If you're planning on setting up a cheap RAID configuration, then SATA is pretty good. My two WD drives support both PATA and SATA, so I don't see much of a challenge there. Some drive do have SATA "ONLY" connectors for both power and I/O. In such a case your rig won't connect to this.