For SATA drives, occasional transmission problems are expected even on otherwise pretty healthy systems. No need to worry about it too much unless the problem repeats itself a lot.

via What do these SATA errors mean / kernel 2.6.25.6 (DRDY ERR/ICRC ABRT) | Linux | Kernel.

This error occurred on the drive using the hot swap cage.  I wonder if perhaps the circuitry on the cage is iffy.  The circuit board on that cage is about the simplest board that can be designed — it just maps wires from one pin connector to another — that’s it.

Perhaps the centos install is OK after all.  It’s intermittent which is bad.  Looks like it might pay to use higher quality hot swap cages.  Tomorrow I’ll try another brand and investigate this further.  Here’s another pertinent point.  I’m seeing this exact same error.

> 51/84:f8:47:dc:35/00:03:02:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
> Jun 11 05:46:23 p34 kernel: [ 1445.288637] ata12.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
> Jun 11 05:46:23 p34 kernel: [ 1445.288639] ata12.00: error: { ICRC ABRT }

That’s your drive reporting that it saw transmission error on the wire.