A data point: In five-plus years of using OpenBSD heavily (and occasionally FreeBSD on the side), I have never run into this. OpenBSD has "soft updates" (http:/

A data point: In five-plus years of using OpenBSD heavily (and occasionally FreeBSD on the side), I have never run into this. OpenBSD has "soft updates" (http://openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates http://openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates) on its filesystem, though, which has similar results as a journaling filesystem. Sometimes fsck needs to run for a bit after a crash or power outage, but it has only lead to a 2-10 minute delay for me, not refusing to boot. Annoying, but hardly fatal.