This is the most I can get when plugging in a hard drive hot and only on some power connectors. [71656.314271] ata5: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x90a02 action 0xe frozen [71656.314277] ata5: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed [71656.314285] ata5: SError: { RecovComm Persist HostInt PHYRdyChg 10B8B } [71656.314294] ata5: hard resetting link [71660.360686] ata5: softreset failed (device not ready) [71660.360694] ata5: applying........

I like dd, although it only reads it, usually a read test of the entire disk will uncover if your hard drive is bad in some parts. This is a good thing to do at least once a month, a lot of times bizarre program behavior, laginess and crashing/unnmounting problems etc.. are due to a failing disc and SMART won't know it or indicate a problem: We must also remember there's never a guarantee, I've found that ever since we moved to larger and more platters per drive with 1TB drives........

I had one of these shipped and it was not recognized when plugged in, here's what a dead drive looks like (I assume it's teh circuit board which is dead): ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) ata1: softreset failed (device not ready) ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) ata1: link online but device misclassified, retrying ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) ata1: softreset f........