Hello Mike... It (at least) seems like that the fact that this is a Intel Rapid Storage RAID10 does play a role after all. I did several tests this morning, after I finally managed to get another disk hooked up via USB3 (the best I could do for now). I tried dm-crypt w/ a single partition and with a Linux s/w RAID1 and RAID10. Unfortunately the RAID tests were done with several partitions that were on the same disk since that is all I have for testing. No matter what I did, I could not get to the point where all memory got exhausted... not even close. So with all tests I have done over the last couple of days, the only one were I could always hit this issue was with my original RAID10 that is a Intel Rapid Storage RAID -- and hooked up to the internal SATA3 ports instead of the USB3 port (which I hope makes no huge difference for this issue). I will post to the linux raid list in a few moments and cc' this list as well. Thanks again for the help thus far, Matthias -- Dipl.-Inf. (FH) Matthias Dahl | Software Engineer | binary-island.eu services: custom software [desktop, mobile, web], server administration -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>