The adapter goes in the MB IDE port and with a mod to remove the plugged hole for the pin that the Milan has, it goes in nicely. This adapter alows you to connect 2 sata drives to one IDE port so I could have 2 sata in one and 2 IDE in the other.
I tried to partition a salvaged sata drive and although it seemed to work, mke2fs wouldn't write the partition. Also, the Mian wouldn't always detect the drive at boot-up either or would crash.
After a few attempts it became apparent that the drive was corrupted and even repeated attempts at fixing it in an Ubuntu box failed. I assumed it was just a duff drive and tried another with the same result. I tried the adapter in the Ubuntu box but it was no better.
Annoyed I gave up and the adapter has sat gathering dust until a few weeks ago when I was tidying up. I ordered a really cheap (£2) single sata adapter and tried that. This one only connects 1 sata to the IDE interface but it worked and I could access a sata DVD.
So I went onto the Startech website and left a note about my experience. I was surprised when they got in touch and said they has a lifetime warranty and promptly replaced the pata2sata adapter. Nice one.
I put it in the Ubuntu box with a sata HDD and a sata DVD and it was able to install ubuntu.

Sadly back in the Milan, it didn't reliably recognise the DVD at boot up. When it did recognise it, it would sometimes read the root folder and then crash or just crash as soon as I accessed it.
I have no idea why it behaves so differently in the Milan, bus speed, voltages ?