Tim got it finally to work. I must have done something in the RAID configuration utility that erase the tables on sdb1. The current state of the system is: kernel 2.6, ext3 filesystem with dir_index feature, empty sdb1, boot and root on sda1. Note: Time added the dir_index feature also to sda1. This allows better handling of large filesystems, but works only with 2.6 Tim is convinced, and I agree, that we do not have a hard drive problem. The problem is software related and has to do with the fact that there is an awful lot of disk I/O going on on this machine. We should assess all the rsync's and such running and see whether they are necessary, and whether they needed at the current frequency. We should also be used the second drive to distribute the I/O load optimally across the two drives. Say, put only /home on sdb1, or only /home/aras. My sense this strategy would also be valid on raneb, snefru, etc., which seem to have disk emergencies more often than usual... Immediate measures: 1) put the RePEc Author Service back online. We were having recently 15-40 new authors a day signing up. We do not want to discourage new users. 2) Think hard how to optimize disk load 3) Then only implement new strategy. Unless there is disagreement, I put the service back on in an hour. Christian Zimmermann FIGUGEGL! Department of Economics University of Connecticut 341 Mansfield Road, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063 http://ideas.repec.org/zimm/ christian.zimmermann@uconn.edu http://ideas.repec.org/e/pzi1.html