This is nothing new IMO. My old Asus A7V (Socket A board) suffered from data corruption when using ATA 100 drives.
Then I used Shuttle, Epox and MSI boards for a long time. Mostly stable, no problems at all.
My latest board is an Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe and it suffers from a few problems.
-I can't run my Hitachi 1TB disk off the SB600 controller without serious data corruption. I have to use the Marvel RAID controller for it.
-BSODs once every 1-2 weeks for no apparent reason (usually when the system is idle or just browsing the web).
-Using four RAM sticks requires overvolting the RAM and severely limits OC potential (crashes at 812MHz or so)
-C3 Standby mode in Vista x64 caused data corruption and loss of the partition table. I think this is fixed now with a BIOS update, but I don't dare put my computer in standby/sleep with this board.
The board does have fancy heatpipe cooling and a black PCB though

Asus designs good looking boards with lots of features, but they release the boards in a broken, beta-like state.
When building systems for others, I usually go with MSI. Not always the absolutely best performers, until recently no fancy features.. But very stable and well supported in my experience. I think I'll use a MSI board for my next system.