How to check SATA controller on a Gigabyte board

[laotzu]

I recently got a lot of {DRDY ERR} on my machine, i.e. it looks like something is half-way dead. First idea of course is the HDD, some Samsung 500 GB drive. But smartctl considers the device as sane, even after running the long test.

The situation improved somewhat after I switched the drive from a SATA 3Gb/s port, where it has been connected to by the vendor, to a 6 Gb/s port. The {READ FPDMA QUEUED} errors disappeared and the machine does not freeze anymore, but still the system produces a {DRDY ERR} every 2 seconds. Apparently everything works.

I even tried an external power supply for the drive and a new SATA cable. No noticeable change with either of these measures.

So since it seems it's not the cable or power supply and SMART considers the drive sane, it looks like a controller issue. Is there any independent way to verify this?

MOBO: Gigabyte P67A-UD3
BIOS: Award F4
CPU: Intel i5-2500 @ 3.3 GHz
OS: Debian Wheezy

Thanks for your help.

 

[cin19]

It was the long time ago the P67/H67 SATA port degrading problem, http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2589 I don't know it is or not, check your MB or call gigabyte support.

 

[laotzu]

Yes, I remember those issues and I think my board was affected. However, strangely the issue disappeared all by itself after 4 days - just as I came back with a new controller. For 30 Minutes after boot the log was flooded by DRDY errors, and then it stopped and didn't come back ever since.