Nowadays, I got such errors, when booting up:

ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hdd, sector 32
IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.14 <tigran@veritas.com>
IA-32 Microcode Update Driver v1.14 unregistered
hdd: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdd: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=64, high=0, low=64, sector=40

The hd in question is a 160G maxtor Ide drive. Soon after the drive could no longer be mounted, and I tried to troubleshoot the problem:
- it turned out that my motherboard could no longer accept more than one drive,
- but the problematic maxtor hdd worked well in an other machine of mine, no errors there, and I could backup even the last bit from it.

So, thinking that it was a motherboard failure, I trashed the motherboard, and got an other, ABIT VH6 one.

First finding: the new, ABIT motherboard saw the maxtor hard drive, no errors from the kernel during boot-up.

Then I jumpered the maxtor to slave, and put a second hd as master on the secondary ide controller.

From that time, the kernel always throws the same "DriveReady SeekComplete Error" messages regarding the maxtor, though the motherboard detects the drive. No matter if I jumper it as master or slave, or if it is alone on the secondary ide controller, the kernel throws the same error, and the drive cannot be read afterwards.

What happened? Is it possible that one of my ide drives is faulty, and it damages the motherboard's ide controller, if a second drive is put on the same controller? I.e. should I trash the second motherboard, too? Or are there chances that the power supply (350W) is the culprit?

What is your opinion?

Hi,

You have the hdd drive jumpers set correctly? What about the position on the cable for the drive. Replace the ide cable?

Run the manufactures diagnostics on the drive as a single drive.

I spent my whole day troubleshooting this, and tried all possible combinations of:
- three different ide cables,
- the 160G maxtor drive as master or slave (of course the other, 80G maxtor ide drive jumpered correctly) on the secondary ide controller, or alone, or connected to the primary ide controller as slave next to a third ide drive.

I came to the consequences, that the "new" motherboard developped the same failure as the old one: it can only accept one ide drive now; a second ide drive does not work even if connected to the other ide controller.
I think one of the two maxtors is an ide controller killer, when connected together with an other ide drive to the same controller. The problem is that I still do not know which one of the two suspects .

I have no more motherboards to kill, so I finished experimenting with the two maxtors, and go with a third drive that is out of suspect.

Hi,

You could try 'CS' for the IDE channel that this drive will be on. Make sure to set both drives to 'CS'.