On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 11:40:09PM +0100, Nuno Magalhães wrote:

I've been shifting the disks around,trying to find a pattern. So far
only the Reds fail, i haven't been able to fail a Toshiba. At first i
thought it was because the Toshibas were both on a RAID1 - i'm still
testing this theory. I.e., i've recently dropped the RAID; one Toshiba
now holds the OS @SATA1, all the others are empty.

I'll keep running more tests and document all combinations (SATA
ports, kernel parameters, etc) and results. I'll re-read on those
parameters and report back once i have something significant.

Could the PSU have an influence? It's a Nox Urano 500.

PSU issues can lead to nasty unexpected issues, so it's theoretically
possible but I can't suggest one way or the other.  If you have spare
components lying around, be it PSU, motherboard or a different sata
controller, trying out different combinations usually is an often
effective way of determining which one is the culprit.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun