Hi, > I tried these kernels (all vanilla): > 2.6.32.13 > 2.6.33.5 > 2.6.34.0
So it's not a known problem that has been fixed. Just a wild guess... can you try recompiling the kernel *without* pata_via? Some people have reported having problems with sata drives on VIA controllers when pata_via is also loaded. If you need to access devices on the PATA ports, you can use the the old non-libata via82cxxx IDE driver. > This is, what I cut from the dmegs out (I hope to get all relevant > infos...if you missing something, I save the complete dmesg output to > disk for later refrence...): This is just the controller initialization part, it does not include the actual information about the drives. Look for something like "ata1: SATA link up..." a bit further in the log. > fdisk -cu -S 56 /dev/sda Well, fdisk -cu defaults to creating the first partition beginning at sector 2048, which is fine as it's divisible by 8 (and thus is aligned on a 4096-byte boundary). I don't think you need to specify the number of sectors per track. But this is not really relevant, as creating unaligned partitions merely results in lower performance, not DMA errors :) > Do I have to replace my motherboard/graphics card/RAM/... > only because WD cannot talk to and/or vice versa? If the pata_via trick above does not work, and an upgrade is out of question, my suggestion is to find a cheap PCI sata2 controller and to use that instead of the on-board sata ports. > Can I use PCI cards on newer motherboards with PCIe-slots??? You cannot use PCI cards in PCIe slots, but most new motherboards still have at least one PCI slot. andrea
