Switching from IDE to SATA with Vista

[oog]

My computer (an HP NC6400) has a mode where the SATA drive looks like an IDE drive to the OS. That's the mode the computer was in when I installed Vista. If I change this setting in the BIOS to treat the hard drive as SATA, will Vista still be able to access the hard drive as it boots up? Is there any benefit to switching to native SATA mode?