On 2010-04-18, John Fremlin wrote:
> Processed 58 files (19 files/sec.)

That seems exceptionally low. I get about 60-70 files/sec on a laptop
hard disk.
> 
> Is there any way to recover the database?

I am no expert with xapian databases, and that might seem obvious, but
you did a notmuch dump to save your tags, did you? If that works you can
nuke your database directory and after a notmuch new (1-2 days?!!) you
can notmuch restore your tags. This way, at least, you won't have any
data loss.

Sebastian