Oh, oh.
On the backup server this morning...
ad6: READ command timeout tag=0 serv=0 - resetting ata3: resetting devices .. done ad6: READ command timeout tag=0 serv=0 - resetting ata3: resetting devices .. done ad6: timeout sending command=c8 s=80 e=00 ad6: error executing command - resetting ata3: resetting devices .. ad6: removed from configuration
Unlike the 40GB ibm deathstar drivers, this is a brand new hitachi 80gb drive.
And it gets better!
After I saw the error message, I attempted to umount -f the filesystem that was mounted on the offending media and it resulted in the machine completely locking up. I see that the reliability that I noticed on earlier FreeBSD releases is still there.