Bad disk or kernel (ATA Driver) problem? - SOLVED

[Sam Leffler]

I have had spectacularly bad luck with Maxtor SATA drives.  I've already 
RMA'd 4 of 8 drives and have 2 more waiting to go back.  1 was DOA, the 
rest failed completely while in operation (typically locking up the 
machine).  These were all Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y160M0 160GB Serial 
ATA drives. After testing for power, cables, disk controller, 
motherboard, and other potential reasons I've decided the drives were 
just faulty and have switched to another vendor.

	Sam