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You should check Olinuxino Lime[1] if you're looking for SATA connectivity. It costs 30 EUR and is open source hardware.

[1] https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A10/A10-OLinuXino-...

Cubietruck -- dual core, quite fast, fairly open, supports hardware virtualization. It has a true SATA port (note that many ARM systems have faked SATA via USB which can be slow).

For me, as long as the IOPS as mentioned in my parent post aren't available, I can just as well connect the Disks through USB. shrugs

Have a look at i.MX6 based machines. Namely CuBox-i, HummingBoard, SABRE Lite and Wandboard. The Utilite is fine, too.

There are quite a few with SATA but you have to hunt around. Eg the Cubox does.

Rather with a PCIe connector.