Those are jumper settings, similar to the IDE drives you mention, but for SATA specific options depending on the drive maker. For example, on this Western Digital support page for mobile drives, it shows two options:
Reduced Power Spinup - RPS: Used by external hard disks to reduce spinup current and allows it to work over USB interface.
Spread Spectrum Clocking - SSC: Used when your SATA controller doesn't support SSC by default.