bug in sata_sil, or is it my hardware?

[franzix]

I installed ubuntu 8.04 a few weeks back. It crapped out after a couple of days. I tried mint, and thought i'd keep with it. I have trouble with system stability, with the system load average regularly hovering above 2. This is odd, as the same hardware in the past has been a <1 load average machine.

A few more details:
Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB ram, NVIDIA 7600GT 256MB
Root partition is on 100GB EIDE drive
mp3's, videos on 80GB SATA drive

I installed without the SATA drive. The trouble seems doubled, maybe tripled, when I boot with it installed, especially after mounting it. Crashes, GNOME locks up, system load average above 8, etc.

Is there a sata_sil bug, a Mint/ubuntu 8.04 problem, or do I have a drive or SATA controller going bad. I'm tempted to just get a new SATA drive for mp3s, but I'd hate to do so if it's a software or SATA controller problem.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

[franzix]

anyone have any thoughts?