Warning - Maxtor SATA II and Nvidia nforce4

[Dax Kelson <dax@gurulabs.com>]

Short version
==============
Nvidia Nforce4 chipset with Maxtor SATA II drives with certain firmware
revisions cause data corruption and system instability when under
moderate to heavy I/O load.

After being suspected for over a year, it was acknowledged just in the
last few weeks, see:

http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2685

(there is a list of affected HD model numbers and HD firmware versions)

If it is possible to determine the firmware version, maybe some printk
warnings could be generated.

Long version
=============

About a year ago I got a new home uber system all decked out.

AMDFX-55
Nforce4 SLI motherboard
2GB RAM
300GB Maxtor SATA II HDD x2 (model 6B300S with firmware BANC1B70)

Off and on I have experienced the following problems:

* kernel panics
* freezes
* insta-reboots
* on-board RAID (nforce fake raid) de-syncing
* LCD blinking on and off (most common symptom for me)
* segfaults and application crashes

The problems were not continuous and would seemingly erratically
appear. 

My memory tested fine with memtest86+ over repeated tests the past 12
months. I RMA'd my video cards and got a new motherboard. I was
contemplating swapping my CPU when I finally did a Google search on
"Maxtor nforce4" and my eyes were opened. Pages and pages of posts in
hundreds of different forums.

Dax Kelson

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