Comment 2 for bug 574665

Even though there's no corruption, ide cannot be considered an acceptable workaround with kvm.

Ata exceptions will occur mostly when writing large files. (eg. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/279693). Proposed workarounds like putting cd in drive don't work with kvm. All processes which currently have io requests pending will freeze for ~10 seconds when this happens. And it does, a lot.