> I forgot to mention that both fsck.ext2 and fsck.ext3 report
>
> 1: Entry 'sendmail.pid' in /var/run (686849) has
> deleted/unused inode 688415. CLEARED.
> /1: Entry 'crond.pid' in /var/run (686849) has
> deleted/unused inode 688416. CLEARED.
> /1: Entry 'xfs.pid' in /var/run (686849) has
> deleted/unused inode 688417. CLEARED.
> /1: Entry 'atd.pid' in /var/run (686849) has
> deleted/unused inode 688418. CLEARED.
>
All inodes are in the same sector.
Could you try out if that sector is destroyed?
One of my broken harddisks showed similar behaviour:
* write operations succeeded.
* read operations immediately after the write (write 16 MB including the
damaged sector, then read all 16 MB) sometimes succeeded.
* read operations after 5 minutes always failed.
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