SATA Wanted Many of the public CentOS Vagrant boxes are configured with only an IDE controller. I assume this is for compatibility reasons. The SATA controller on VirtualBox performs better, so that is what I want. Serial ATA (SATA) Like a real SATA controller, Oracle VM VirtualBox’s virtual SATA controller operates faster and also consumes fewer CPU resources than the virtual IDE controller. Also, this enables you to connect up to 30 virtual hard disks to one machine instead of just three, when compared to the Oracle VM VirtualBox IDE controller with a DVD drive attached.