Getting around WRITE_DMA errors

[Sebastian]

Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:

>Are you sure that your hard drive is not dying? 
>Run smartctl -a /dev/ad0 and see if any errors were being logged.
>(smartctl is part of the smartmontools port)
>You should also try another cable.
>  
>
Thanks for the response. I'm reasonably sure, the disk is brand new, and 
though it could certainly be bad, I installed Linux on the system this 
morning without issue. I've tried two different UDMA cables also, just 
to be sure. Under PIO4 mode in BSD (by setting hw.ata.ata_dma=0), I can 
install and then write data to my heart's content without any errors.

I'm currently reinstalling again, because I believe a partition has 
become corrupted after panicking with the disk in UDMA6 mode.