Hardware Problem

[Doug Hardie]

I have a hardware problem with a disk drive.  Last night I received  
millions of messages like:

Oct 29 23:00:02 zook kernel: ad0: timeout waiting for write DRQ
Oct 29 23:00:02 zook kernel: g_vfs_done():ad0s1e[WRITE 
(offset=39908835328, lengt
h=8192)]error = 5
Oct 29 23:00:02 zook kernel: ad0: timeout waiting for write DRQ
Oct 29 23:00:02 zook kernel: g_vfs_done():ad0s1e[WRITE 
(offset=39908835328, lengt
h=8192)]error = 5
Oct 29 23:00:16 zook kernel: ad0: timeout waiting for write DRQ
Oct 29 23:00:16 zook last message repeated 3 times
Oct 29 23:00:16 zook kernel: g_vfs_done():ad0s1e[WRITE 
(offset=1433600, length=81
92)]error = 5
Oct 29 23:00:16 zook kernel: g_vfs_done():ad0s1e[WRITE 
(offset=1441792, length=81
92)]error = 5
Oct 29 23:00:16 zook kernel: g_vfs_done():ad0s1e[WRITE 
(offset=1449984, length=51
20)]error = 5
Oct 29 23:00:16 zook kernel: g_vfs_done():ad0s1e[WRITE(offset=8192,  
length=2048)
]error = 5
Oct 29 23:00:28 zook kernel: ad0: timeout waiting for write DRQ
Oct 29 23:00:28 zook last message repeated 8 times

They were going to messages and the console as fast as the system  
could log them.  ad0 is not the boot disk but is used to hold large  
files.  I have seen somewhat similar problems once before and  
replaced the drive.  That was about a year ago.  This time I am  
suspecting the IDE controller.  Is this reasonable, or is it still  
likely a drive failure?

Rebooting the system appears to have temporarily terminated the  
problem as I am no longer receiving the messages and nothing appears  
to have been lost on ad0.  However, the bulk of data on it are the  
news archive and other archive files that were replaced shortly after  
the reboot.

smartctl shows passed on the drive, but I believe I am reading that 6  
sectors have been remapped.