I'm continously getting the following error with a Seagate ST31500341AS when under load: ata17.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen ata17.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT ata17.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 res 40/00:01:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) ata17.00: status: { DRDY } ata17: hard resetting link ata17: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) ata17.00: configured for UDMA/100 ata17.00: retrying FLUSH 0xea Emask 0x4 ata17.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0 ata17: EH complete Reading [1] it seems that this is a known issue with this firmware when NCQ is enabled, and kernel disables NCQ automatically due to this. However, I'm experiencing the issue despite this. This is on kernel 2.6.33.1. NCQ seems to be correctly disabled: # cat /sys/block/sdo/device/queue_depth 1 It seems likely to me that the firmware issue is therefore not limited to NCQ. Or do you think this might be caused by something else? Do you need any more information? In the meantime, I'll try to contact Seagate support to see if they have a firmware update for my drive. [1] https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Known_issues#Seagate_harddrives_which_time_out_FLUSH_CACHE_when_NCQ_is_being_used -- Anssi Hannula -- 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