I just saw this message in my log (openSUSE 11.3, Linux 2.6.36.2):

ata6.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x400100 action 0x6 frozen
ata6.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error
ata6: SError: { UnrecovData Handshk }
ata6.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
ata6.00: cmd 61/58:00:9f:69:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 45056 out
    res 40/00:04:9f:69:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
ata6.00: status: { DRDY }
ata6: hard resetting link
ata6: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata6.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata6: EH complete

Two questions:

1. Which disk caused the error? I search /sys and /proc but couldn't find a way to map ata6 to a device (/dev/sdaXY)

2. When such an error happens, does Linux retry the disk operation? Or do I have a corrupt filesystem?