freebsd stable - Jul 2005 - SATA Problems - ATA_Identify timeout ERROR - using Tyan S5350 with FreeBSD 5.4

I suppose the question is was there a problem with the Tyan S5350 motherboard
and its ATA controller - I know that two identical motherboards with different
hard disks exhibit the same problem.  And if so why is it that there has been
little on these lists about problems with the chipset which is on this
motherboard (a fairly common one I believe from Intel).

 

Although the problem went away the machines filesystem seems to have got
corrupted so maybe all was not fixed after all.

 

There have been a number of comments and queries about ATA problems and SATA
problems with 5.4 but no views as to if this is a real problem.

 

Any insights would be gratefully received.

 

One aside when trying to upgrade using CVSUP does the tag need to be RELENG_5
or RELENG_5_4?

Hello Alan,

AJ> There have been a number of comments and queries about ATA problems and
SATA
AJ> problems with 5.4 but no views as to if this is a real problem.

I have to agree. I've had nothing but trouble with various Intel
boards with Intel ICH5 controllers and SATA hard disks under FreeBSD
and yet the problem either doesn't seem to be widespread and isn't
recognized by the community in general. I find that strange since the
ICH5 must be common in the field along with SATA disks from Western
Digital. I would have believed faulty hardware to be the cause, but I
have *three* machines that are capable of generating DMA TIMEOUTs
while reading or writing SATA disks.

Regards,

Tony.

-- 
Tony Byrne