Argh. Well, as reported, I found out that the problem with my USB drive was that the kernel wanted to run e2fsck on it, because it had been mounted so many times w/o being checked. OK. So I *did* run e2fsck on it. It was fine. Then I started rsyncing to it again. Same dang message. Oct 8 17:36:14 necronomicon kernel: EXT2-fs warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck \ is recommended I ran e2fsck betweeen 6 and 7 o'clock, but: Oct 8 18:11:42 necronomicon last message repeated 588 times Oct 8 19:12:22 necronomicon last message repeated 251 times Oct 8 19:13:23 necronomicon last message repeated 2069 times Oct 8 19:14:24 necronomicon last message repeated 1925 times Seems like whatever mount count the kernel is using, it doesn't get cleared by e2fsck. I tried manually changing it to zero using tune2fs, and that seemed to reset it to zero, but the mount count immediately started zooming upward again. So what gives? Is there something about the USB protocol so that this dang thing is getting remounted a zillion times? Sadly, I smashed the mount counting (setting the maximal mount count to 0), using tune2fs. Now the annoying zillions of messages in /var/log/kernel/warnings are gone. But it's still pig slow. This seems not to be 100%, either. I rsynced to it last night, and it was fine. Tonight: slow. Thanks for any advice, R _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list