I did some tests on the ccd partition again.  I filled it up with small 
size files to about 90% and did rm -rf in that filesystem:

# df -k
Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
...
/dev/ccd0d    3895084   252741  3447588     7%    /var/spool/news

the deletion of files and directories was pretty fast all the way down to 
about 40% and it crawed after that... from 40% to current 7% it took over 
3 hours now..  doesn't seem normal.

ccd0d is 2 2gig hawks (identical)

# more /etc/ccd.conf
ccd0    32 none /dev/sd1e /dev/sd2e

and kernel config
pseudo-device   ccd     4               # concatenated disk devices

..............          ....................................
Thomas T. Thai          Infomedia Interactive Communications
tom@iic.net             TEL 612.376.9090 * FAX 612.376.9087