What am I missing? Is it odd to have two SATA controllers for a single disk drive, or is that at all relevant?
You don't, it would be odd :)
Actually, we do - it is configured to have two SATA controllers in it.
Heh, Actually you don't "have two SATA controllers for a single disk drive" but you have two controllers.
As the last poster suggested, use AHCI for Linux.
jlc