[CentOS] Any experiences with newer WD Red drives?

[Miguel Medalha]

> However, the latest C7 server I built, ran into problems with them on
> on a Intel C236 board (SuperMicro X11SSH) with tons of "ata bus error
> write fpdma queued". Googling on it threw up old suggestions to limit
> SATA link speed to 1.5Gbps using libata.force boot options and/or
> noncq. Lowering the link speed helped to reduce the frequency of the
> errors (from not getting a smartctl output to getting a complete
> listing within 2 tries).
>

I discovered, amidst great initial pain, that most, if not all, of the 
problems I had with SATA disks were caused by SATA cables and not by the 
disks themselves. Intermittent problems, such as disks randomly not 
showing up in RAID groups, were solved when I replaced the cables with 
proper ones. Some of the bad cables even came from well known names.