FLUSH CACHE EXT timeouts with ST31500341AS

["Anssi Hannula" <anssi.hannula@iki.fi>]

I'm continously getting the following error with a Seagate ST31500341AS
when under load:

ata17.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
ata17.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT
ata17.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0
         res 40/00:01:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata17.00: status: { DRDY }
ata17: hard resetting link
ata17: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
ata17.00: configured for UDMA/100
ata17.00: retrying FLUSH 0xea Emask 0x4
ata17.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0
ata17: EH complete

Reading [1] it seems that this is a known issue with this firmware when
NCQ is enabled, and kernel disables NCQ automatically due to this.
However, I'm experiencing the issue despite this. This is on kernel
2.6.33.1.

NCQ seems to be correctly disabled:
# cat /sys/block/sdo/device/queue_depth
1

It seems likely to me that the firmware issue is therefore not limited to
NCQ. Or do you think this might be caused by something else? Do you need
any more information?

In the meantime, I'll try to contact Seagate support to see if they have a
firmware update for my drive.

[1]
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Known_issues#Seagate_harddrives_which_time_out_FLUSH_CACHE_when_NCQ_is_being_used

-- 
Anssi Hannula