PATA drive - dma_timeouts and system lockups

Chaps,

a while back I experienced problems with dma_timeouts on one of my drives
which was causing it to deselect dma and slow things down somewhat. This
week, whilst trying to sort out some backup issues, and therefore working
the disk quite hard, this problem has reared its head again along with some
system freezes. Funny thing is, on re-boot, once the journal is replayed,
all is good again.

I'm wondering, is this really a drive failure or is this some hardware issue
between a fairly new PATA drive and a several years old motherboard?
Normally when hard drives have been on their way I've had then either start
to corrupt data, or give the click of death or just completely die in a
very short period of time. Nothing like I am seeing now.

Googling for my motherboard and disk did not reveal much, someone somewhere
has had issues with any possible hardware combination - were isolated
issues but could not see any major outright problem.

So chaps, do you think my drive is on the way out or is it a hardware issue?
Just wondering whether a replacement drive or replacement motherboard is
appropriate, unless there is an obscure hdparm fix.

Pete

--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk
.

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