How to get rid of ata3 errors when Lubuntu boots (and wakes up from sleep)?

For some time now, whenever my laptop (which runs Lubuntu 15.10) boots up or wakes up from sleep, it throws tons of ata3 disk errors for several hours. My system is usable - I am able to log in to the LXDE environment and do my work. But the ata3 errors get me worried that my HDD is going to die on me soon.

This same output repeats over and over again for hours:

[51156.517147] ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 1 SControl 310)
[51156.518867] ata3: EH complete
[51156.524000] ata3: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x4040000 action 0x3 frozen
[51156.525754] ata3: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed
[51156.527577] ata3: SError: { Commwake DevExch }
[51156.529312] ata3: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[51156.530901] ata3: hard resetting link

I ran a SMART test - here is the output of that.

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED    

Num   Test_Description  Status  Remaining LifeTime (hours)  LBA_of_first_error

# 1 Vendor (0x50) Completed without error 00% 4187 - 
# 2 Short offline Aborted by host 20% 4187 - 
# 3 Vendor (0x50) Completed without error 00% 2944 - 
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2944 - 
# 5 Vendor (0x50) Completed without error 00% 2658 - 
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2658 - 
# 7 Vendor (0x50) Completed without error 00% 2391 - 
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2391 - 
# 9 Vendor (0x50) Completed without error 00% 788 - 
# 10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 788 - 

The SMART test has one "Aborted by host" error, I don't know if that has anything to do with the problem since the overall result is PASSED. Another thing I tried was disassembling the laptop and removing the HDD/putting it back in, to make sure the HDD is connected securely. The problem persists. Any ideas on how to fix the problem? Or is my HDD on its way out?

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