SATA and IDE

[#1]

I have a gigabyte mb with both ide and sata connections.  My current config is as follows IDE 0 2 hard drives IDE 2 optical drives.  What are the issues if I use SATA? And what would be the best config?
Thanks

[#2]

Depending on the MOBO there are often multiple BIOS "modes" to make the SATA & IDE drives look separate or mixed.
In general it's best to leave as default unless there are OS/driver issues.
Normal/typical config is Disks on SATA and Opticals on IDE, though lately many CD/DVD drives come as SATA too.
You presumably realise that SATA is only one device per port - no master/slave setups.

[#3]

I have both sata and ide running. o.s. runs from the sata drive and older  ide hd are for data only. I also bought a sata dvd.
Bios boots to sata 1 hd then sata 2 dvd then hard drives.
Podman

[#4]

As for issues, you may need to load drivers separately when installing an OS (e.g. XP or Vista) especially if the SATA is part of a RAID controller.
Only way to find out easily is to try it and see if the SATA disk is recognised or not....
And generally SATA will give better performance of course.
Note that if you add a SATA drive to an existing system it may well be recognised, but that doesn't always mean you can therefore simply install to it as a system disk; the installation process has a subset of hardware drivers and no access to online updates.