hard disk I/O error fixed only by hdparm -W0 - any clues?

[VJ]

Hi,
    I have a seagate hard disk with 8Mb cache. I get hard disk sector
I/O errors but those are easily fixed by using hdparm -W0 on the disk.
Running smart tools does not give any error. Is it because linux
kernel cannot cope with this cache or what? This disk works perfectly
under windoes XP though (I removed Fedora and installed XP).

Regards from
VJ