Olivier Bornet wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to install Debian on 4 RaQ550 with each 2 80GB disks. All
> seems OK with 3 of RaQ, but with one, it crash when I put the two disks
> in a RAID1 meta device. In fact, it as crash at about 6% before the 70GB
> partition is fully synchronized.
> 

Hi Olivier,

There is an interaction problem between the Serverworks IDE controller
and some Seagate BlockPoint drives.  They aren't handling the bus
throttling correctly on ATA bus writes and are sometimes overflowing
their FIFOs.

The CSB5 in UDMA mode 5 sends 3 words after the drive de-asserts
DDMARDY- (per ATA spec section 9.14.3.2) but these drives sometimes
have problems when the three extra words are sent and overflows its
FIFO.  Other IDE controllers only send 2 extra words and don't cause
this to happen.

The only work around we have found is to limit these drives to ATA
mode 4.  Supposedly newer Seagate firmware for these drives will report
only UDMA mode 4 capable, but for earlier drives (like those probably
found in your raq550) try this patch against 2.4.20.

-duncan