[opensuse] Computer freezes a lot

For a while now, I have been having problems with my laptop (Acer Aspire 9400). It freezes up for 30 to 45 seconds on a fairly regular basis.This problem started with SuSE 10.2 and is continuing with 10.3 (soon to be 11.0).

It's most likely to happen when, after a period of time idle, I click on something or try to use the keyboard. It is most frequent when I am doing something graphics intensive, such as editing photos.

When this freezing started, I added 512MB RAM to bring it up to 1GB, but it didn't make any difference.

I believe the problem is hard drive related and I am including a part of /var/log/messages which shows what's happening during the time of a freeze. I am wondering if I should replace the current drive with a new one. The machine is currently dual booting WinXP and openSuSE 10.3

I think I know *what* is happening. Unfortunately I don't know *why* or *how* to fix it.

The times given below indicate a freeze of 11 seconds. However, it usually lasts longer than that.

There have been other posts here re: freezing, but they do not seem to relate to the problem I'm currently having.

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Jun 16 21:18:51 copernicus kernel: ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xa0)
Jun 16 21:18:51 copernicus kernel: ata1.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Jun 16 21:18:51 copernicus kernel: ata1.01: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:20/00:00:00:00:00/b0 tag 0 cdb 0x0 data 0
Jun 16 21:18:51 copernicus kernel: res 51/20:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/b0 Emask 0x5 (timeout)
Jun 16 21:18:56 copernicus kernel: ata1: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd1)
Jun 16 21:19:01 copernicus kernel: ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
Jun 16 21:19:01 copernicus kernel: ata1: soft resetting link
Jun 16 21:19:01 copernicus kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: ata1.01: configured for UDMA/33
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: ata1: EH pending after completion, repeating EH (cnt=4)
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: ata1: EH complete
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 156301488 512-byte hardware sectors (80026 MB)
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 156301488 512-byte hardware sectors (80026 MB)
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Jun 16 21:19:02 copernicus kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
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