sata hard drive

Is it possible to only have one hard drive hooked up through sata? I have heard that you put two on there to "MIRROR" each other but I was wanting to know if it was possible to just run one?

You can ONLY have one harddrive hooked up through SATA (that's the 'benifit' of SATA), what I think you have confused is SATA RAID and to answer that question, the asnwer is yes as well

Ok so when I am setting up the sata I will have one hard drive hooked to it however do you necessarily have to run raid on it? Plus, I will also be using two harddrives on my ide cables so that isn't going to put a wrench in anything is it?

Uh... when you uh... plug it in, you'll see how it works Running SATA is a choice (i.e., it'll prompt you on whether you want to run RAID or not)