"failed command: WRITE DMA" but SMART test says hard disk is OK

Question

Recently I started receiving (in dmesg) such errors:

[ 1569.944985] ata6.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6
[ 1569.944991] ata6.01: BMDMA stat 0x44
[ 1569.944994] ata6.01: failed command: WRITE DMA
[ 1569.944998] ata6.01: cmd ca/00:80:57:7a:6e/00:00:00:00:00/f2 tag 0 dma 65536 out
         res 51/84:41:96:7a:6e/00:00:00:00:00/f2 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
[ 1569.945001] ata6.01: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 1569.945002] ata6.01: error: { ICRC ABRT }
[ 1569.945022] ata6: soft resetting link
[ 1570.181297] ata6.01: configured for UDMA/100
[ 1570.181314] ata6: EH complete

The "smartctl /dev/sda -a" command says:

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
(...)
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   059   045   045    Old_age   Always   In_the_past 41 (Min/Max 20/41)

However, when I do SMART self test the result is "completed without error":

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      6674         -
# 2  Extended offline    Interrupted (host reset)      60%      6669         -
# 3  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      6667         -

Is my hard disk broken or is the problem somewhere else?

Answer 1

The error is a bus error rather than a media error, so yes, the problem is elsewhere. It looks like a bad sata cable.