Error representation is too crude. Currently any and all error conditions are represented with ATA STATUS and ERROR registers. Errors which aren't ATA device errors are treated as ATA device errors by setting ATA_ERR bit. Better error descriptor which can properly represent ATA and other errors/exceptions is needed.

When handling timeouts, no action is taken to make device forget about the timed out command and ready for new commands.

EH handling via ata_scsi_error() is not properly protected from usual command processing. On EH entrance, the device is not in quiescent state. Timed out commands may succeed or fail any time. pio_task and atapi_task may still be running.

Too weak error recovery. Devices / controllers causing HSM mismatch errors and other errors quite often require reset to return to known state. Also, advanced error handling is necessary to support features like NCQ and hotplug.

ATA errors are directly handled in the interrupt handler and PIO errors in pio_task. This is problematic for advanced error handling for the following reasons.

First, advanced error handling often requires context and internal qc execution.

Second, even a simple failure (say, CRC error) needs information gathering and could trigger complex error handling (say, resetting & reconfiguring). Having multiple code paths to gather information, enter EH and trigger actions makes life painful.

Third, scattered EH code makes implementing low level drivers difficult. Low level drivers override libata callbacks. If EH is scattered over several places, each affected callbacks should perform its part of error handling. This can be error prone and painful.