Looks very much like a problem with the SATA controller. If the repeat look you have shown there is an "infinite" loop, then presumably some failure is not being handled properly.
I agree, even though the AHCI driver was supposed to be stable. The loop is not quite infinite btw., it does time out after a few minutes.
I suggest you find a SATA related mailing list to post this to (Look in the MAINTAINERS file maybe) or post it to linux-kernel.
Will do. linux-ide should do the trick.
I doubt this is directly related to the raid code at all.
The only problem I see with the RAID code is that it does not fail the disk when it hangs in this way. How is this possible? The libata driver shows lots of errors and even if md does not react to these there should be a (short) timeout for the request somewhere. The disks do have limited integrated error correction, because RAID controllers like to handle that themselves - could that have something to do with it? Marketing blurb: [...] Inside a RAID system, where the RAID controller handles error recovery, the drive needn't pause for extended periods to recover data. In fact, heroic error recovery attempts can cause a RAID system to drop a drive out of the array. WD RE2 is engineered to prevent hard drive error recovery fallout by limiting the drive's error recovery time. With error recovery factory set to seven seconds, the drive has time to attempt a recovery, allow the RAID controller to log the error, and still stay online. [...]
Good luck :-)
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