My apologies in advance if I'm violating any protocols - I'm a bit of a
newbie on Linux, but a long-time geek.  I may have some info that is
useful.  If not - you may disregard.

I've been running Ubuntu on my server since version 6.  I switched to
Ubuntu on all my 3 desktop systems last fall and upgraded to 9.10.   Key
for me was success with VirtualBox so I could migrate over with a few of
my old windows Apps intact.  All worked well.   About a week before
Christmas (2009), I had a hard disk corruption on my root ext3
partition.  It was a real pain, but I had full backups and did a
restore.  I became paranoid and learned how to read and watch the logs.
My faith in Linux was somewhat shaken.  It didn't seem to be a hard
drive failure.

Alas - I had another corruption a week ago.  In my logs - I had the
dreaded pattern discussed above.  My sample (edited for brevity):

kernel: warning: `VirtualBox' uses 32-bit capabilities (legacy support in use)
kernel: device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
kernel: ata1: EH in SWNCQ mode,QC:qc_active 0xFFFC0 sactive 0xFFFC0
kernel: ata1: SWNCQ:qc_active 0x40 defer_bits 0xFFF80 last_issue_tag 0x6
kernel:      dhfis 0x40 dmafis 0x0 sdbfis 0x0
kernel: ata1: ATA_REG 0x51 ERR_REG 0x4
kernel: ata1: tag : dhfis dmafis sdbfis sacitve
kernel: ata1: tag 0x6: 1 0 0 1  
kernel: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x1 SAct 0xfffc0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
kernel: ata1.00: Ata error. fis:0x41
kernel: ata1.00: cmd 61/08:30:5f:4e:77/00:00:1a:00:00/40 tag 6 ncq 4096 out
kernel:            res 51/04:08:5f:4e:77/04:00:1a:00:00/40 Emask 0x1 (device 
error)
kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
kernel: ata1.00: error: { ABRT }
...
kernel: ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
kernel: ata1: hard resetting link
kernel: ata1: nv: skipping hardreset on occupied port
kernel: ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
kernel: ata1: EH complete

I have been experimenting to get to the bottom of this so I can trust my
filesystem.  I have tried 3 different SATA drives, different SATA
cables, a different PSU and even a different plugin SATA controller.  I
still see these SATA link errors on my dual Core AMD 64 bit system.

What I have found (on my system) is a strong correlation between these
SATA errors and the use of VirtualBox (I'm using VirtualBox version PUEL
v3.1.2).  My logs are quiet for many days - until I start doing moderate
IO on my Win32 XP Guest OS.  Then I see SATA errors on my Linux (Dual
Core AMD 64 bit) host.  I've seen this on Kernels 2.6.31-17-generic
x86_64 and back to 2.6.31-14.

By any chance - are those of you with this problem running VirtualBox
and noticing this host SATA problem occurs or gets aggravated when you
are doing file IO in the guest?   If so - you are not alone.  Again -
sorry if this info is unhelpful.

-- 
Consistent repeating [ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient ]
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/297058
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