have a similar part from exsys that is outdated pcie version 1 with x1 speed sata 2 and a total throughput of knap over sata1 and even this completely outdated lame cucumber recognises all hard disks including smatr values and spindown. so i wouldn't worry about a more modern (than mine) controller. what i would worry about is whether it is bootable including uefi.

Interesting question... Is the capacity limited at all? I mean, hard disks only read at one point on their disk anyway, and the data management is done by them.