I’ve found the same symptoms on one of my computers too. This system uses raid1 and it has happened two times now in the past 2 months. After the first time I did a RMA on the harddrive and they found no errors on it. I did however get a new drive and now it has frozen again.
One odd thing is when booting, the SATA link gets 3.0 Gbps but after a freeze it tries with 1.5 Gbps.
The SATA cable did seem to be so robust so maintenance people did not change it the last time despite my orders of a cable change
Now the big question: Is this a driver problem or a cable problem. The system is used 24/7 so it’s difficult to test new kernels, change cables etc in trial and error strategy.
Relevant log messages below.
Mar 5 15:13:22 my-host smartd[4025]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], not capable of SMART self-check
Mar 5 15:13:28 my-host kernel: ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
Mar 5 15:13:28 my-host kernel: ata2.00: cmd b0/d0:01:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
Mar 5 15:13:28 my-host kernel: res 40/00:03:80:01:32/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Mar 5 15:13:28 my-host kernel: ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
Mar 5 15:13:28 my-host kernel: ata2: hard resetting link
Mar 5 15:13:29 my-host kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
Mar 5 15:13:34 my-host kernel: ata2.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
Mar 5 15:13:34 my-host kernel: ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
Mar 5 15:13:34 my-host kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
Mar 5 15:13:34 my-host kernel: ata2: hard resetting link
Mar 5 15:13:39 my-host kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
Mar 5 15:13:40 my-host kernel: ata2.00: both IDENTIFYs aborted, assuming NODEV
Mar 5 15:13:40 my-host kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-2)
Mar 5 15:13:44 my-host kernel: ata2: hard resetting link
Mar 5 15:13:44 my-host kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host smartd[4025]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], failed to read SMART Attribute Data
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host smartd[4025]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], Read SMART Self Test Log Failed
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host smartd[4025]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], Read SMART Error Log Failed
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host kernel: ata2.00: both IDENTIFYs aborted, assuming NODEV
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host kernel: ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-2)
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host kernel: ata2.00: disabled
Mar 5 15:13:48 my-host kernel: ata2: EH complete
edit: btw, this computer uses ICH7, lspci row: RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA RAID Controller (rev 01)