Jeff,
this is a new machine, so I don't know when it started, but it was
running a couple of Fedora 2.6.31/32 kernels for a while with no trouble.
So I _think_ it's recent.
I'd guess it's due to commit 27943620cb ("libata: implement spurious irq
handling for SFF and apply it to piix"), in fact.
With current -git I got a 30 second pause, and it was accompanied with
this kernel log:
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 7.040194] ata4: clearing spurious IRQ
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978933] ata4: lost interrupt (Status 0x50)
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978948] ata4.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 frozen
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978951] ata4.01: failed command: READ DMA
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978954] ata4.01: cmd c8/00:08:ef:44:47/00:00:00:00:00/f0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978955] res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978957] ata4.01: status: { DRDY }
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 37.978963] ata4.00: hard resetting link
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 38.306451] ata4.01: hard resetting link
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 38.785773] ata4.00: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 38.785787] ata4.01: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 38.809900] ata4.01: configured for UDMA/133
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 38.809903] ata4.01: device reported invalid CHS sector 0
Mar 9 12:51:05 i5 kernel: [ 38.809907] ata4: EH complete