Tistisnot - as I understand it, a SART is a transponder not a transmitter so it has to be interrogated by a ship's radar to get a response - therefore you have to be in range of a ship's radar to be detected.
A 406 Mhz beacon however, is visible to satellites and the two messages about its owner and its position are transmitted every 50 seconds or so - the satellite picks up those messages and transmits them to an earth station (LUT) when it sees one.
The UK MCA have their own monitoring setup - which was embedded in the ARCCK - and can quickly identify whose beacon it is.
Which one would you prefer?
All ELTs/EPIRBS perform best when the aerial has a clear view of the sky - not suprisingly really - so deploying them properly will always give a better signal.
The 225 incident had to do with 121.5 beacons not 406 beacons (although 406 ones have an embedded 121.5 transmitter in them as well)