It looks like the Q35 chipset has SATA support for CDROM, but not for virtual hard disk.

In many OS's/Appliances - there is no way to use virtio disks, and I can either use the extremly slow IDE with 440FX or nothing else. on Virt-Manager though, you can choose a SATA hard disk.

So, is it possible to add the SATA support back for hard drives please?