. I think I've found part of the reason for my problems, particularly why it deteriorated over 3 weeks: http://www.namesys.com/ This is the Reiser filesystem website. Under DOWNLOAD it says: CAUTIONWARNING 1. Don't use linux kernel 2.4.16 or earlier for reiserfs operations, as many of those releases contain critical bugs, some of the most serious of which are not in reiserfs but affect reiserfs. 2.4.16, 2.4.9, and 2.4.3 are especially bad. The SuSE release of 2.4.16 is ok, it contains some needed patches. 2.4.19 is the latest release at the time of writing, and it is solid and reliable. 2. For linux kernel 2.5.6 or 2.5.7 you need an additional patch that will allow the use of reiserfs: 01-revert_broken_alviro_cleanup.diff Suse, please release 2.4.19!