Bad disk or kernel (ATA Driver) problem? - SOLVED

[Jason Andresen]

Sam Leffler wrote:

> I have had spectacularly bad luck with Maxtor SATA drives.  I've 
> already RMA'd 4 of 8 drives and have 2 more waiting to go back.  1 was 
> DOA, the rest failed completely while in operation (typically locking 
> up the machine).  These were all Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y160M0 
> 160GB Serial ATA drives. After testing for power, cables, disk 
> controller, motherboard, and other potential reasons I've decided the 
> drives were just faulty and have switched to another vendor.

I have a pair of 6Y200M0 drives in my machine.  They absolutely _hated_ 
the SiI 3112 controller I had them on (the one built-in on the 
motherboard).  Lots of timeouts and the occasional untraceable random 
lockup.  I moved them over to a Promise SATA controller and they seem 
much happier.