I think this bug is causing data corruption. I was in the process of moving my files off the encrypted partition to an unencrypted partition: chris@chris:~$ sudo mv dotfiles /home/chris2/ [sudo] password for chris: mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.du.txt.swp' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.du.txt.swx' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.8SWB6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.YSGG6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.R2UH6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.TEQG6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.XJ1D6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.PASY5U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.HNKY5U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.6VJI6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.IWN95U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.N8IH6U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.gnome2/nautilus-sendto/pidgin_buddies_online.RPZ15U' for reading: Input/output error mv: cannot open `dotfiles/.recently-used.xbel.MC8H6U' for reading: Input/output error chris@chris:~$ the errors are all about zero-length files that it can't read. Because of the errors, the original folder wasn't deleted. I then ran a 'diff -r' and found that in addition to the zero-length files that didn't get copied, some files with real content were copied wrongly. Over 15,000 files were copied. Only 6 were copied incorrectly, and they were all in the same folder. All 6 files in that folder were copied incorrectly: chris@chris:~/dotfiles/.keychain$ ls -l /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain total 48 -rw------- 1 chris chris 80 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-csh -rw------- 1 chris chris 58 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-csh-gpg -rw------- 1 chris chris 136 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-fish -rw------- 1 chris chris 87 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-fish-gpg -rw------- 1 chris chris 110 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-sh -rw------- 1 chris chris 74 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-sh-gpg chris@chris:~/dotfiles/.keychain$ ls -l /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain total 24 -rw------- 1 chris chris 80 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-csh -rw------- 1 chris chris 58 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-csh-gpg -rw------- 1 chris chris 136 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-fish -rw------- 1 chris chris 87 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-fish-gpg -rw------- 1 chris chris 110 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-sh -rw------- 1 chris chris 74 2010-09-02 18:32 chris-laptop-sh-gpg chris@chris:~/dotfiles/.keychain$ for i in *; do cmp /home/chris{,2}/dotfiles/.keychain/$i; done /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-csh /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-csh differ: byte 49, line 2 /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-csh-gpg /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-csh-gpg differ: byte 49, line 1 /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-fish /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-fish differ: byte 1, line 1 /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-fish-gpg /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-fish-gpg differ: byte 49, line 1 /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-sh /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-sh differ: byte 33, line 1 /home/chris/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-sh-gpg /home/chris2/dotfiles/.keychain/chris-laptop-sh-gpg differ: byte 49, line 1 chris@chris:~/dotfiles/.keychain$ kern.log has lots of errors in it like this: Oct 20 11:58:51 chris kernel: [ 7803.424618] Valid eCryptfs headers not found in file header region or xattr region Oct 20 11:58:51 chris kernel: [ 7803.424622] Either the lower file is not in a valid eCryptfs format, or the key could not be retrieved. Plaintext passthrough mode is not enabled; returning -EIO What is the best way of preventing further data loss?