I have a workstation with a Gigbyte board and an Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02) that's apparently getting bitten by https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=502499 It's running CentOS 5.4 32 bit, and the user is suffering from high load and sluggish response whenever a disk write of more than a few MB is made. iostat shows the disk at 100%. [root at marge ~]# uname -a Linux marge.gizmopartners.com 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5 #1 SMP Tue Nov 3 16:18:27 EST 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux [root at marge ~]# hdparm -i /dev/hda /dev/hda: Model=WDC WD2000JB-00GVC0, FwRev=08.02D08, SerialNo=WD-WCAL83129186 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=57600, SectSize=600, ECCbytes=74 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled Drive conforms to: Unspecified: ATA/ATAPI-1 ATA/ATAPI-2 ATA/ATAPI-3 ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5 ATA/ATAPI-6 * signifies the current active mode Any suggestions welcomed. Thanks! --Chris