Just a couple of ideas or things to try:
Check your memory for errors (memtest86)
Consider trying another version of the Sata driver, but be careful of
version conflicts causing HD corruption (backups might be advisable
before trying this out)
Sata BIOS update? Again, watch out for HD corruption problems, backup
everything first.
Is there a raid setup for the Sata interface, could this be affecting
HD activity?
Boot from a Knoppix Live CD, then try some large file writes/transfers
to the partition in issue.

HTH
--
Best regards,
Kyle
"I.C. Koets" <I.C.Koets@student.tudelft.nl> wrote in message
news:47422C84.767A068A@student.tudelft.nl...
| I apologize for the crosspost, but I am unsure whether I am having a
| hardware or OS problem.
|
| In my PC are three physical disks. Each of these is chopped up into
a
| primary partition and an extended partition, which is subdivided
further
| into logical disks.
|
| All logical disks behave normally, except for disk K:, which is
located on
| the extended partition of a physical disk I don't boot from.
|
| Disk K: has been operating flawlessly for two years. Never any
problem with
| it. Then trouble started, some weeks after I had added the third
physical
| disk. It alone is having trouble writing. When I write to it, the
write
| proceeds at 3 MB per second for a few seconds, then chops down to
zero. This
| seems to be after about five seconds, totalling 15 MB. The listed
write
| cache of my disk is 16 MB. This could be coincidence. Or not. The
speed this
| SATA disk usually manages in writing is 55 MB/s. It still reads
normally, as
| quick as the other disks can write at the very least.
|
| The other logical disks on the partition (in fact, *all* other
logical
| disks) run normally, merrily writing themselves completely full with
speeds
| ranging from 45 MB/s for my oldest PATA drive to 60 MB/s for my
newest SATA
| drive.
|
| The problem exhibited itself first when trying to defrag. This
caused the
| system to freeze. The HD light is on continuously during the freeze.
The
| same happens when trying to write more than 15 MB to disk per boot
session.
| But if I write less than this amount, the PC freezes on shutdown,
and hard
| rebooting corrupts or destroys the data I wrote.
|
| SMART status is perfect for all disks.
| All disk controllers report using UDMA. UDMA4 is set in BIOS.
| Reinstalling the IDE channels does nothing.
| CHKDSK /r finds nothing wrong.
| Disk Management finds nothing wrong.
| Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics finds nothing wrong.
| Formatting doesn't help.
| Removing the logical disk and recreating it doesn't help.
| Oddly, the 'write all zeroes to disk' option in Western Digital Data
| Lifeguard Tools reports success, but doesn't help.
|
| My system:
| P4 3.0 GHz
| 2,620,652 KB RAM (PC3200)
| ASUS P5GD1 mobo
| PATA Western Digital 200 GB disk (boot)
| SATA Western Digital 120 GB disk <-- the offending article
| SATA Western Digital 500 GB disk
| PATA NEC 3500A DVD burner
|
| I hope I left nothing out. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.