ubuntu file copy adventure

[Philippe Landau]

this is an old computer, pentium 3, 800MHz, 128MB RAM on hoary.
i connected an external HD (format: HFS+) via USB,
the first problem: it mounted as owned by root,
so to be able to write i chowned a directory in it.
then i started a drag and drop copy of a dir
with 100'000 files and around .
after 2 hours and 90'000 files copied
it was clear it would take days,
as it went slower and slower, taking minutes for
files as small as 100 kB.

the problem in these situations is
how can i stop ubuntu ?

first i clicked on cancel, after 5 minutes
this triggered a delete operation,
which i tried to cancel too.
3 hours later i was still not able
to reach the shut down menu
because ubuntu was still so busy
with memory paging (i suppose),
so i pulled the plug :-)

kind regards     philippe