nice one. concerning sysfs, you have sysfsutils. Install it and add: bus/scsi/devices/0:0:0:0/timeout = 1 in /etc/sysfs.conf I'm going to try it out with a timeout of 10, will leave it running and update with the results. -- ata_piix problem with Intel ICH7 chipset https://launchpad.net/bugs/53754