"Forever" fsck?

On a Fedora Core 3 machine, I've an fsck that's lasted many hours now, and
shows no sign of ever completing. Cycles look like:

Restarting e2fsck from the beginning...
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Inode 7 has illegal block(s). Clear? yes

Illegal block #20494 (1156635280) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20495 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20496 (1156635280) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20526 (1156616080) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20527 (1156616064) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20528 (1156616064) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20686 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20687 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20688 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20689 (1156691328) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20719 (1137955448) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Too many illegal blocks in inode 7.
Clear inode? yes

Restarting e2fsck from the beginning...
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Inode 7 has illegal block(s). Clear? yes

Illegal block #20494 (1156635280) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20495 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20496 (1156635280) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20526 (1156616080) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20527 (1156616064) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20528 (1156616064) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20686 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20687 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20688 (1137955446) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20689 (1156691595) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Illegal block #20719 (1137955448) in inode 7. CLEARED.
Too many illegal blocks in inode 7.
Clear inode? yes

....

This is an ext3 file system which is just about empty. However, it has
300+G of capacity and - this part is weird - when I ran df on it it showed
about 90+G in use. I'd unmounted it and remounted it on a different mount
point, and the df oddity persisted. So it wasn't an artifact of a file
being held open.

Any thoughts? The file system is largely empty because I copied
everything off it so that I could examine this in more detail. So I've no
problem leaving the fsck running (though I am worried that the process
might outlive me {8^).

I do see that the block numbers are increasing, even though it is always
inode 7. So this doesn't at least appear to be an *infinite* loop.

Is there any better way to fix this problem (whatever the problem is)?
And what *is* the problem here?

Thanks...

Andrew

.

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