These can be worked-around by using the "older" usb-storage drive, but that may need to be manually enabled (and leads to bad performance compared to good chips).
Personally I've had to try a couple of USB/SATA adapters until I found one that worked reliably (but that might have just been bad luck), but since then it works flawlessly.
My second RPi is in an Argo Eon case which (given it's designed/advertised as a NAS case for the RPi) is using one of the "good" chips and I've never had an issue with it.
Last but not least: if you don't need massive storage space, then I'd argue against spinning rust: they are more prone to failure, usually require more power and may even cause undesired noise. So if you don't need >= 1TB, go with an SSD, they are cheap as dirt.