I'm setting up a machine with 6 hard drives on an Intel D865PERLK mobo, 2 on the PATA ports, 2 on a Promise Ultra TX2 and 2 on the ICH5R SATA ports. The first drive is a Maxtor 250GB, the other 5 are WD1800JB PATA drives, so I'm using SATA convertors on the two that connect to the SATA controller.

I'm trying to build a raid array from the 5 180GB drives and a 180GB partition on the 250GB drive. I'm able to build and start the array, but when I run 'mkfs -t ext3 -T largefile4 /dev/md0' it sets up the FS, and then either hangs or panics when writing the file system accounting information.

If I remove the 2 SATA drives from the array, it all works okay, so I'm certain the problem is with the SATA controller, those two drives or the SATA -> PATA converter.

Does anyone have any guidance on what to check next? I've used these converters on another motherboard, I've used these drives on another system (with the converters) and I've used this motherboard with other SATA drives (without converters), so I'm certain it's some hybrid compatibility issue.

Anyone have any suggestions?