Is there any issue or risk of driver incompatibility with other players or...

[mville]

The design problem affects 3Gb/s Serial-ATA II (SATA II) ports provided by the 6-series chipsets only, potentially causing the SATA II ports to degrade over time and essentially leading to SATA devices to being unavailable as far as the computer is concerned

There's a tool here that tells you which SATA ports are affected by the problem and which ports are OK. Maybe put the DVD drive on an unaffected SATA port:

http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/identi...ted_sata_port/

[Paranoid]

There's a tool here that tells you which SATA ports are affected by the problem and which ports are OK. Maybe put the DVD drive on an unaffected SATA port:

http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/identi...ted_sata_port/

I ran the tool and it confirmed the issue. I would need to unhook one of my SSDs (the non-boot one) from its SATA III (6 GB/s) port to plug the DVD drive in. I could do that to prove there is no issue with the drive and dbpa should work. It wouldn't be a permanent solution however as that still leaves me with a 500GB SSD on the shelf and 3TB of HDD storage on two SATA II ports. My concern is that the two HDDs will become intermittently inaccessible at some point if the SATA controller chip continues to degrade.

I am taking up the issue with the company that supplied the machine...

I guess there is a lesson here - if you see iastore() timeout problems on your machine (or ATAPI errors if using microsoft instead of intel SATA controller drivers, or possibly even deterioration in performance or hangs), and your machine is around 2-4 years old, the problem could be due to the SATA controller on your motherboard if it is an intel series 6 chipset. Use CPU-Z to see if yours is B2 stepping. If so you may have problem due to an Intel flaw in the chipset.

[Paranoid]

I now have a new motherboard and all is well. I re-ripped a bunch of my CDs in secure mode without any problem. No evidence of any hangs anywhere in other apps.

Note for other readers - this is not unique to ASUS (my board manufacturer) but all manufacturers using the relevant chipset as it was caused by an Intel flaw in their SATA controllers at the time.

I got great support from my supplier (who spoke with ASUS about it) and my machine has a new comparable model motherboard, all free of charge.

[mville]

I now have a new motherboard and all is well. I re-ripped a bunch of my CDs in secure mode without any problem. No evidence of any hangs anywhere in other apps.

Note for other readers - this is not unique to ASUS (my board manufacturer) but all manufacturers using the relevant chipset as it was caused by an Intel flaw in their SATA controllers at the time.

I got great support from my supplier (who spoke with ASUS about it) and my machine has a new comparable model motherboard, all free of charge.

Glad to hear all is well. Happy ripping :smile2: