I saw a similar problem posted in this list by Russell Brown several months ago and didn't see any solution. I really need some help for this. I'm willing to do any tests and report results. Any suggestion is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance. I am trying to use the Sony AIT3Ex SATA tape drive (SDX-870V) on the Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (An onboard SATA controller in Dell PowerEdge T300 Server). I've tried it on kernel 2.6.24.4 and it is not working correctly when reading/writing data. Sometimes data can be written to tape (using tar) if its size is small. (ex: <100MB) It fails if the size of the data is large (ex: >500MB) and generates error message. The drive status is ok. mt -f /dev/nst0 status drive type = Generic SCSI-2 tape drive status = -1291844608 sense key error = 0 residue count = 0 file number = 0 block number = 0 Tape block size 1024 bytes. Density code 0xb3 (unknown). Soft error count since last status=0 General status bits on (41010000): BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN mt -f /dev/nst0 tell At block 0. tar -b 128 -chf /dev/nst0 file1 tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot write: Input/output error tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now When I used the sonytape tool to check the tape write and read function. I got: ./sonytape /dev/sg3 -w datap.bin SONY tape device detected. SONY SDX-870V Revision: 0100 Checking tape drive write and read function. Warning!! This process will write over data and takes several minutes. Data compression disabled. Request Sense data: 0x72 0x0b 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x0e 0x09 0x0c 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x03 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xa0 0x10 No Sense, Setmark detected Done. dmesg error ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 ata4.00: BMDMA stat 0x24 ata4.00: cmd a0/01:00:00:00:fc/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 dma 65536 out cdb 0a 01 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 res 10/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x2 (HSM violation) ata4: soft resetting link ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 ata4: EH complete st0: Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): 72 0b 00 00 00 00 00 0e 09 0c 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 a0 10 st0: Add. Sense: No additional sense information st0: Sense Key : Unit Attention [current] Info fld=0x1 st0: Add. Sense: Power on, reset, or bus device reset occurred st0: Error on write filemark. Other related information from kernel log: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[C] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64 scsi1 : ata_piix scsi2 : ata_piix ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xbc20 ctl 0xbc10 bmdma 0xbc40 irq 18 ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xbc28 ctl 0xbc14 bmdma 0xbc48 irq 18 ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: MAP [ P0 -- P1 -- ] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[D] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.5 to 64 scsi3 : ata_piix scsi4 : ata_piix ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xbc30 ctl 0xbc18 bmdma 0xbc60 irq 19 ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xbc38 ctl 0xbc1c bmdma 0xbc68 irq 19 ata3.00: ATAPI: Optiarc DVD+/-RW AD-5170S, 101B, max UDMA/66 ata3.00: configured for UDMA/66 ata4.00: ATAPI: SONY SDX-870V, 0100, max UDMA/100 ata4.00: applying bridge limits ata4.00: configured for UDMA/100 scsi 3:0:0:0: CD-ROM Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-5170S 101B PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5 scsi 4:0:0:0: Sequential-Access SONY SDX-870V 0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 3 st 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi tape st0 st 4:0:0:0: st0: try direct i/o: yes (alignment 512 B) st 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 1 I2O subsystem v1.325 Lspci -v (for the SATA controllers) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO]) Subsystem: Dell PowerEdge T300 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 I/O ports at cc20 [size=8] I/O ports at cc10 [size=4] I/O ports at cc28 [size=8] I/O ports at cc14 [size=4] I/O ports at cc40 [size=16] I/O ports at cc50 [size=16] Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [b0] #13 [0306] 00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 85 [Master SecO PriO]) Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 0210 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19 I/O ports at cc30 [size=8] I/O ports at cc18 [size=4] I/O ports at cc38 [size=8] I/O ports at cc1c [size=4] I/O ports at cc60 [size=16] I/O ports at cc70 [size=16] Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [b0] #13 [0306] Best Regards, Liping Ye -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html