SATA HDD Errors

Question

Motherboard:     K8MM3-V / MS-7181 V2.0  AMD Socket 754
SATA Controller: Via VT8237R PLUS
BIOS Version:     W7181VMS V3.0 012006
Are there any known problems with SATA HDDs giving occasional errors with this motherboard/SATA controller, or with any other MSI motherboards?
Have there been any BIOS updates concerned with the type of problem described below?
(Note. The problems of VT8237R support for SATA 3.0Gb/s (‘SATA II’) are well documented. To rule out the higher speed capability as a cause my SATA drives are configured to 1.5Gb/s – see below.)
Problem Description
I have four of these MSI motherboards. Recently one system running Windows XP suffered a file system corruption in an NTFS partition on a Samsung SATA HDD. I am investigating why this happened.
My tests
Test 1
A Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA drive fails the standalone Samsung ESTOOL surface diagnostic with Service Code AJ36 ‘Bad Sector’.  (Note. This drive has been set to SATA 1.5Gb/s using ESTOOL on another non-MSI motherboard with SATA 3.0Gb/s support).
However, this drive does pass the full surface ESTOOL diagnostic test when:
- Using an IDE to SATA adapter with the drive on the K8MM3-V
or
- Running ESTOOL on the drive using another type of motherboard (ASRock)
Test 2
Under Windows XP occasional disk errors, which are logged in the System Event Log, can be provoked by intensive HDD read/writes. My test case has three partitions with Acronis True Image backing up one partition to a backup file on another partition, and a chkdsk process running on a third partition.
The logged errors are:
Event Source: Disk
Type: Error
Event Id: 11
Description: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D
Note. This test fails on two different systems using K8MM3-V motherboards.
Test 3
The same disk errors reported in Test 2 occur using a Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s drive instead of the Samsung. (This drive was jumpered to SATA 1.5Gb/s).
My conclusions
- The Samsung HDD is not faulty
- The problem is not confined to a single K8MM3-V motherboard
- This problem has caused a serious loss of HDD data integrity
Comment or advice is welcomed.

Answer 1

I submitted my problem report to MSI Online Customer Service on Nov 6th. They replied stating that the onboard SATA controller of the K8MM3-V / MS-7181 only supports SATA 1.5Gb/s and not SATA 3.0Gb/s.
I pointed out that my problem report clearly states that the Samsung Spinpoint and Western Digital Caviar SATA HDDs I am using for the tests are configured to 1.5Gb/s. There has been no further reply from MSI to date.
A further test (see below) has revealed no problem using a PCI SATA controller instead of the onboard SATA controller.
In my opinion errors reported by the Samsung ESTOOL diagnostic and the occasional Windows XP disk controller errors (Event Id 11) are symptomatic of either a ‘glitch’ in the motherboard’s hardware interface to the Via controller chip or a BIOS firmware error.
Because this motherboard is obsolete, MSI may be reluctant to investigate. However, the company should be concerned that the same design may have been carried over to subsequent motherboards and similarily has not been picked up in design review or product validation testing.
My experience certainly deters me from using MSI motherboards in future.
Test 4
Tests have been repeated using the Samsung HD103SJ HDD with an unbranded Silicon Image 3114 4-port PCI SATA RAID Controller which supports SATA 1.5Gb/s.
No errors are detected in the Samsung ESTOOL diagnostic full surface test. (I was impressed that ESTOOL successfully detected the drive via the PCI controller).
No Windows XP disk errors were logged over several hours of intensive HDD disc read/write transactions.