[gentoo-user] Errors with External eSATA Drive (DRDY ERR / ICRC ABRT)

[fire-eyes <sgtphou@fire-eyes.org>]

Hello,

I keep running into errors while using an external eSATA drive. I have 
searched for information regarding this issue, and there just is not 
much out there. The best information I've seen mentions that a user was 
having this issue, but it went away as long as the disk was connected to 
the system at boot. That is not the case for me.

System information:
  - Dell XPS 420
  - Intel Q6600 cpu
  - 4GB ram
  - Seagate FreeAgent pro external 500GB disk (USB/Firewire/eSATA)
  - lspci: 00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA 
RAID Controller (rev 02)
   - Note: I am not using the RAID functionality.

Software:
  - Gentoo Linux
  - Kernel: 2.6.25.8 vanilla, self-configured and installed
   - Kernel config: http://fire-eyes.org/t/config-2.6.25.8-062708.txt

Reading the disk, things behave fine. When it's written to for a short 
period, that is when errors begin to happen. An audible click can be 
heard from the drive, transfers stop, and after a short pause, transfers 
resume. This continues in a loop, with the clicking happening every 7 
seconds or so. There appears to be no damage to the filesystem or 
written files, everything just gets put on hold for a few seconds.

Curiously, this does not happen if I attach the disk with USB. I don't 
have a firewire cable to try. The eSATA cable is six feet (1.8 meters) 
long. Personally, I was a little surprised at how long this cable is; I 
searched for a shorter one, and found none. I plan on trying a different 
cable when I get around to it.

Here is a short collection of the errors seen when connected via eSATA 
(no issues when using USB):


ata6.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2
ata6.00: irq_stat 0x40000001
ata6.00: cmd 35/00:00:97:85:b0/00:04:0b:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 out
          res 51/84:00:96:89:b0/00:00:0b:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
ata6.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata6.00: error: { ICRC ABRT }
ata6: hard resetting link
ata6: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata6.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata6: EH complete
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors (500108 MB)
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't 
support DPO or FUA


Any pointers out there? If you require more information, please let me 
know. Thank you for reading this post!

  -- Fieldy
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