I tried some new things to further the resolution on this BUG.

I disconnected the DVD drive, and it did not fix the problem.

I disabled smartmond (which was monitoring my two HDs and worked fine in edgy) and the problem went away.

I no longer got sdb freezing and going away when I booted.

So in this case it turns out to be an interaction between smartmond and the new ata-piix driver and not hald in my case.

I reconnected my cd, and everything still worked, until I put an Audio CD in the drive.

then I got the following errors on my main SATA Hard drive, which resolved itself after about 30 seconds and I was able to rip that cd.

Ripping worked fine under Edgy BTW.

I really regret upgrading to fiesty, but its too late to go back :(

This happened to my primary SATA HD after inserting an Audio CD into the DVD drive...

[  693.413304] ata1.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
[  693.413312] ata1.01: cmd a0/01:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/b0 tag 0 cdb 0x43 data 4 in
[  693.413314]          res 40/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/b0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[  700.452975] ata1: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)
[  723.429090] ata1: port failed to respond (30 secs, Status 0xd0)
[  723.429095] ata1: soft resetting port
[  724.914305] ata1.00: ata_hpa_resize 1: sectors = 586072368, hpa_sectors = 586072368
[  724.980859] ata1.00: ata_hpa_resize 1: sectors = 586072368, hpa_sectors = 586072368
[  724.980864] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[  725.146800] ata1.01: configured for UDMA/33
[  725.146812] ata1: EH complete
[  725.147503] SCSI device sda: 586072368 512-byte hdwr sectors (300069 MB)
[  725.147667] sda: Write Protect is off
[  725.147670] sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[  725.147900] SCSI device sda: write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[  725.148149] SCSI device sda: 586072368 512-byte hdwr sectors (300069 MB)
[  725.148261] sda: Write Protect is off
[  725.148262] sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[  725.148702] SCSI device sda: write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

The initial dmesg for the SATA drives

[    3.041958] ata1.00: ata_hpa_resize 1: sectors = 586072368, hpa_sectors = 586072368
[    3.042001] ata1.00: ATA-7: ST3300620AS, 3.AAC, max UDMA/133
[    3.042036] ata1.00: 586072368 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
[    3.042071] ata1.01: ATAPI, max UDMA/33
[    3.042104] ata1.01: applying bridge limits
[    3.108534] ata1.00: ata_hpa_resize 1: sectors = 586072368, hpa_sectors = 586072368
[    3.108576] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    3.275100] ata1.01: configured for UDMA/33
[    3.275138] scsi1 : ata_piix
[    3.499816] ata2.00: ata_hpa_resize 1: sectors = 390721968, hpa_sectors = 390721968
[    3.499857] ata2.00: ATA-6: ST3200822A, 3.01, max UDMA/100
[    3.499892] ata2.00: 390721968 sectors, multi 16: LBA48
[    3.499925] ata2.00: applying bridge limits
[    3.509867] ata2.00: ata_hpa_resize 1: sectors = 390721968, hpa_sectors = 390721968
[    3.509906] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100
[    3.510032] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST3300620AS      3.AA PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[    3.510979] scsi 0:0:1:0: CD-ROM            TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S183L SB01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[    3.511815] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST3200822A       3.01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[    3.512328] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: MAP [ P0 P2 P1 P3 ]
[    3.512490] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[    3.512558] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.5 to 64
[    3.512712] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x0001d400 ctl 0x0001d082 bmdma 0x0001c880 irq 17
[    3.512764] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x0001d000 ctl 0x0001cc02 bmdma 0x0001c888 irq 17
[    3.512803] scsi2 : ata_piix
[    3.680982] ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0x0001d407
[    3.681024] scsi3 : ata_piix
[    3.692419] usb 1-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[    3.847805] ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0x0001d007
[    3.872872] SCSI device sda: 586072368 512-byte hdwr sectors (300069 MB)
[    3.873033] sda: Write Protect is off
[    3.873063] sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    3.873482] SCSI device sda: write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    3.873552] SCSI device sda: 586072368 512-byte hdwr sectors (300069 MB)
[    3.873589] sda: Write Protect is off
[    3.873619] sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    3.873629] SCSI device sda: write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    3.873666]  sda:<6>usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[    3.888927]  sda1 sda2 sda3
[    3.889329] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
[    3.889491] SCSI device sdb: 390721968 512-byte hdwr sectors (200050 MB)
[    3.889531] sdb: Write Protect is off
[    3.889562] sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    3.889572] SCSI device sdb: write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    3.889634] SCSI device sdb: 390721968 512-byte hdwr sectors (200050 MB)
[    3.889671] sdb: Write Protect is off
[    3.889701] sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    3.889710] SCSI device sdb: write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    3.889747]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4 <sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[    3.902794] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[    3.902953] sr 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[    3.919175]  sdb5 sdb6 >
[    3.930032] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdb
[    3.932302] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[    3.932349] sr 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5
[    3.932391] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

The Sata drives (all three) are connected to an Intel ICH8R controller.