My computer (Ubuntu Feisty) would not boot correctly a few days
ago: it seemed to get into a loop with the following printed about
every 7 seconds (all laboriously copied in longhand, since it wasn't
logged!):
ata1.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata1.01: (BMDMA stat 0x65)
ata1.01: cmd c8/00:08:80:b4:a8/00:00:00:00:00/f4 tag0 cdb 0x0 data 4096
in
res 51/01:08:80:b4:a8/00:00:00:00:00/f4 Emark 0x1 (device error)