Comment 1 for bug 57608

Is there any references to ext2 in your /etc/fstab? Do you use the ext2/3 driver for windows to access that partition? Had you mounted it by hand anywhere?

Sounds like it wasn't mounted as ext3, or the journal was damaged for some reason. The delay you speak of is a major reason for using journaling in ext3. Without the journal, ext3 is just ext2, which requires a repair process that's proportional to the size of your drive (people used to complain about it taking too long back even when drives were only a few hundred megs).

Lack of feedback is a problem though; I think there's a spec on that too.