partition won't mount after install

[dsouzarris]

Here are the facts:

Discernible errors: *note: copied long hand on my laptop from the errors arising on my desktop*
============
ata6.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata6.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
ata6.00: failed command: READ DMA
...
ata6.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata6.00: status: error: { UNC }
============

here's the history:
installed mint12 over top of an old install of Ultimate edition/ubuntu 9.04 on a partition on my 1 TB HDD affectionately known to me as /dev/sdb10.
It was not an easy install. The liveDVD kept hanging on me during bootup due to a miscommunication between the mint12 opensource Nvidia drivers and my videocard.
worked around by installing w/ "nomodeset" (thanx to a post on this forum)
finally got mint12 installed and up/running, apt-get (apt-got?) the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, logged off to reboot x, x did not like my new drivers stating that the drives I had didn't match my kernel, or something. I went to bed to try and get a good handle on it in the morning.
In the morning, to my surprise, grub loaded mint12 right off the bat w/ no problems.
I then proceeded to attempt to download a few updates and important programs (simons puzzels and chromium) when halfway through downloading Chromium, System monitor indicated that there was no longer any network activity. I loaded firefox, and that seemed to surf the net okay. Could ping google from terminal. so, I decided to reboot and take a fresh attempt.
this is when my grub failed to load.
after inserting the mint liveDVD and boot to the command prompt, I was able to do a few things, rebooted, and behold: grub was back.
...but now my partition seemed to be in dire straights.
Upon a few more boots into the command prompt via the liveDVD I was able to determine that I could mount other sdb* partitions, just not sdb10.
everytime I attempt to access sdb10 it proceeds to spew out line upon line of the above error, repeated, often with no or very slight variations on the theme.

....so, being a slightly-older-than-noob who's being using linux for years but not run into this level of crazy before ...help?

[mintybits]

Sounds like a disk hardware error. Could be a cable but not if partition 10 is the only one that doesn't work properly. Could be some disk error problem...check SMART data in Disk Utility? Here's a thread discussing this symptom but your cause may not be the same: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1034762
Good luck.

"apt-got" -