I've got a bunch of high-end but old, just before SATA came out machines.
I've learned (via painful sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, which f'ing slot was it in when it worked?, fuck, it mattered?) process that I keep the original boot / install disk whenever possible.

I tried to treat it like SCSI, but SCSI controllers have far more intelligence (at least mine did) and SATA did not, so where the SCSI worked the SATA failed.

I've even had the boot mode geometry settings get flipped during the process (since the older BIOSes could only get to the tiny 1st partition, and then certain compat modes triggered), which then caused the next step to scribble on the wrong area of the disk.

On the other hand, treated as a secondary with the OS fully booted before any attempt at access, and they make for fast big storage on the older boxes.