Every 12-hrs -- "ad0: TIMEOUT - WRITE DMA"

[V.I.Victor]

[...]
>First of all:  The disk is *not* dying.  "SMART" won't reveal anything.
>The behaviour is perfectly normal for IBM-DJNA-3* type disks.
>
>When those disks are used in continuous operation (24/7), they
>will go into automatic maintenance mode after 6 days.  This is
>kind of a short self-test and recalibration to ensure reliable
>continous operation.  It will be repeated after another 6 days
>ad infinitum.
>

It's been over 3.5 years since my original post -- imagine my surprise!

The drive's still running (24/7) and still reporting the same retries. Because of the pattern of the retries, I never really thought that the drive was bad.  But, until now, I never knew why it was happening.

Thanks *very* much for the info!