While i've never installed a sata drive, from what i've read you just have to be extremely careful with the cable, otherwise you can break the connector. Also, when installing windows, when it asks for raid drivers make sure to hit f6 and install the sata controller drivers so Windows can see the drive.
Sata is serial ata, one device per cable, and supports faster speeds (150MB currently)
IDE is PATA, parrallel ata, or two devices per cable. Max speed is 133
RAID is different, isn't a format like sata or ide. It allows you to combine multiple hard drives for either increased hard drive read/write speeds, increased redundancy, or both.
i just woke up, so i'm sure i missed something there =P