You know, I have been looking for some new projects, but if you have something in mind there is usually a board out there that can meet your needs, however, price in some cases is prohibitive for some of them.
I have found some 'better' SATA solutions (SoC or SBC which has supposedly better SATA throughput) however they are often around the $150.00 USD price point which kinda makes it cost prohibitive in some cases to just 'test' or see if it really fits your needs. One good example of this is the '
Clearfog Pro' I can't tell you how bad I just want to buy one ($230.00 USD with case). However, I just can't justify the cost right now for my 'toys' budget. It could probably easily replace a few other boards and be a very productive network router/switch if i needed as well. It looks like the perfect board though for running a NAS and supporting a network stack well. It is also Marvell and not Allwinner, which means better performance for SATA, etc. The downside though is your limited to Linux 3.x because there is no mainline support, but there is OpenWRT for it which might even be better to use in some cases, I wouldn't know without testing it out my self.
I do believe you would get better stability out of the board though, so it may be worth the cost overall? (you get what you pay for?)
Will check back again later, work is calling...
Cheers!