I was getting exactly these errors on my SUSE 7.3 box. I eventually traced the problem to dodgy IDE cabling. I was using rounded cables which worked OK with ATA-33 drives but when connected to a Promise Ultra 100 and some faster drives they intermittently caused exactly the errors you are getting. Replacing the IDE cables with some old fashioned ribbon style cables fixed the problem straight away and everything has been hunky-dory ever since. Hope this helps Sean.
<4>reiserfs: found format "3.6" with standard journal <4>reiserfs: enabling write barrier flush mode <4>reiserfs: using ordered data mode <4>reiserfs: checking transaction log (device ide0(3,2)) ... <4>for (ide0(3,2)) <4>hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } <4>hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError } <4>hda: cache flushing failed. disable write back cacheing for journalled file systems <4>hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } <4>hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError } <4>hda: cache flushing failed. disable write back cacheing for journalled file systems
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