Warning - Maxtor SATA II and Nvidia nforce4

[Dax Kelson]

Short version
==============
Nvidia Nforce4 chipset with Maxtor SATA II drives with certain firmware
revisions cause data corruption and system instability.

This was acknowledged just in the last few weeks, see:

http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2685


Long version
=============

About a year ago I got a new home uber system all decked out. I have
Fedora installed plus small Windows install for gaming.

AMDFX-55
Nforce4 SLI motherboard
2GB RAM
Nvidia 6800GT PCIe x2 in SLI mode
300GB Maxtor SATA II HDD x2 (model 6B300S with firmware BANC1B70)

Off and on I have experienced the following problems:

* kernel panics
* freezes
* insta-reboots
* on-board RAID (nforce fake raid) de-syncing
* LCD blinking on and off (most common symptom for me)
* segfaults and application crashes

The problems were not continuous and would seemingly erratically
appear. 

My memory tested fine with memtest86+ over repeated tests the past 12
months. I RMA'd my video cards and got a new motherboard. I was
contemplating swapping my CPU when I finally did a Google search on
"Maxtor nforce4" and my eyes were opened. Pages and pages of posts in
hundreds of different forums. Honestly, I had a sense of relief that my
culprit was identified.

I'm going to go review my bug reports and close any that could possibly
be related to this hardware problem.

Dax Kelson
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