K8N nForce 4 (CK804) and SATA drive problems

Question

Hi,
I have a K8N Neo MB with a 4 port sata and RAID. It seems that it is not stable with sata drives at all.
I had at first 2 120G SEAGATE drives. I kept getting random hangups from windows AND linux. I thought it was a problem with one of the drives to I booted with one of them at a time and worked a bit... it seemed the problem went away.
but later, after a week or so, it seems everything comes back again. same problems with freezes and hangups.
when windows for example freezes, and i press reset. at the boot screen, the POST would hang up at the step which detects the SATA drives. it would stay like this foreever.
I would have to totally shut down power for a few seconds and boot again.
I tried working with pata drives and its totally great and stable. no problems. if i install a sata drive with the pata, i get the same hangup problems.
i bought another seagate 80gb sata drive just to make sure that the older 120gb were not a problem. it worked for me fine a t first, but started to do exactly the same afterwards
i tried to access the drive from linux in order to trace the access pattern of the drive and get a sense of what was going wrong. Here is the syslog from the kernel messages.
any help with that issue is highly appreciated. thanks
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201288] ata1: command 0x25 timeout, stat 0xd0 host_stat 0x1
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201297] ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201300] ata1: status=0xd0 { Busy }
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201308] sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201310] sda: Current: sense key: Aborted Command
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201313]     Additional sense: Scsi parity error
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201318] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 39086208
Mar  8 22:01:15 ubuntu kernel: [  715.201322] Buffer I/O error on device sda5, logical block 0
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858112] ata1: command 0x25 timeout, stat 0xd0 host_stat 0x1
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858121] ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858124] ata1: status=0xd0 { Busy }
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858132] sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858135] sda: Current: sense key: Aborted Command
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858137]     Additional sense: Scsi parity error
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858143] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 39086208
Mar  8 22:01:45 ubuntu kernel: [  731.858147] Buffer I/O error on device sda5, logical block 0
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515491] ata1: command 0x25 timeout, stat 0xd0 host_stat 0x1
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515501] ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515504] ata1: status=0xd0 { Busy }
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515511] sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515514] sda: Current: sense key: Aborted Command
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515516]     Additional sense: Scsi parity error
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515523] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 39086208
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  748.515526] Buffer I/O error on device sda5, logical block 0
Mar  8 22:02:15 ubuntu kernel: [  750.227687] Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554638] ata1: command 0x25 timeout, stat 0xd0 host_stat 0x1
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554651] ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554654] ata1: status=0xd0 { Busy }
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554666] sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554669] sda: Current: sense key: Aborted Command
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554672]     Additional sense: Scsi parity error
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554681] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 39086208
Mar  8 22:02:45 ubuntu kernel: [  765.554686] Buffer I/O error on device sda5, logical block 0

Answer 1

the answer for this problem is very simple.. I was having EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM as you... I changed 3 hds sata 200gb because I wasnt finding out the cause... so I found this link:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/service/faq/faq/esc_faq_answer.php?L_kind=1&Q_LIST=1141&NA=637
The problem is the NCQ technology... just disabled it and everything will be fine... i did this here and now is everything PERFECT! lol
regards!