Hi, I'm working on an embedded linux DVR product and its kernel is based on 2.6.24. During recent testing I found several SATA disk IO errors while read/write disks for long time, e.g. about 24 hours. I find three kinds of Seagate SATA disk have such problem. They are ST2000DL003 (Barracuda Green / 2TB / 5900rpm / 64M cache / 4KB per sector) ST500DM002 (Barracuda Green / 500G / 7200rpm / 16M cache / 4KB per sector) ST1000526SV (SV35 series / 1TB / 7200rpm / 32M cache / 512B per sector). The kernel output is alike below. ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen ata4.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 res 40/00:01:09:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) ata4.00: status: { DRDY } ata4: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0) ata4: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset ata4: hard resetting link ata4: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xff) ata4: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) ata4: hard resetting link ata4: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xff) ata4: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) ata4: hard resetting link ata4: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xff) ata4: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) ata4: hard resetting link ata4: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) ata4: reset failed, giving up ata4.00: disabled ata4: EH complete I analyzed the kernel output and got its reason is ATA_CMD_FLUSH_EXT command timeout. I tried adding SCSI flush cache command timeout to 120 seconds and retrying 5 times when the command is timed out, the symptom was still happened. I tried adding ATA_CMD_FLUSH_EXT timeout to 120 seconds becuase of the specification of ATA8, the symptom was still happened. There is a very strange symptom that is before the failed ATA_CMD_FLUSH_EXT(cmd ea) command, the last command must be ATA_CMD_VERIFY(cmd 40). In most kernel outputs, the sector LBAs that ATA_CMD_VERIFY accessed are in a very narrow range (from 0xC24F00 to 0xC24F09), even for different disk modles, such as ST2000DL003 and ST1000526SV. I also found same symptom in debian buglist http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=625922 Can you give me some suggestion on this issue? Thanks. Tony Tian 2012-04-16 tzz@xxxxxxxxxxxx -- 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