Regarding SATA, yes the cables are nice and thin, but man I would like to hit the guy who designed the SATA socket. It is so flimsy and feeble - plus if you bend SATA cables 90 degrees, you risk data loss! They also suffer from interference more. The locking mechanism isn't part of the spec, but thankfully some manufacturers add them now as they have a habit of falling out with the slightest knock otherwise. Even with the lock, they move around in the socket and wear down the contacts.

In the past, we've had great sockets like ethernet. Nice and solid click and sturdy. Yet even today, daft socket and cable designs popup.

To answer your question, yes I've had issues with SATA drives that I never had with IDE. Not a bios issue though. I have 8 ports on my motherboard, and they can be flaky. I run them in AHCI, and drives kept getting dropped and disappearing from windows or boot. First it was my SATA DVDRW that did it in IDE mode, then my boot drive, then one of my DATA drives. Played around with the SATA cables and ports and they came back. Not sure if it's a bad cable or port, or the fact the cables used to run right next to a fan motor and above one of the hard drives. I think I found a nice stable configuration now, months without issues, but I'd love a more robust connection and cable for drives.