ReadyNAS NV+ syslogd taking 100% CPU

Hi - 

I've got a Sparc-based ReadyNAS NV+ that I've had for years.  Currently running RAIDiator 4.1.14; 4 x 2TB drives in Raid-X configuration, with about 300G/5.5T free.

Lately, the NAS box will become non-responsive during transfers and I have to pull the power, and re-install the OS in order to make it happy.   Unfortunately, it's not happy for more than a few hours at a time lately, and I've had to do this once a day or so.   By non-responsive, I mean that I can ping it, but not telnet/ssh/frontview, and the front-panel power-button seems to do nothing with a brief press.

I've bought its replacement, and am transferring ~ 6TB off it via CIFS, and it is still locking up.

This last time, I left top running in a terminal window, which was still updating, though slowly.

top - 18:24:58 up 1 day,  1:18,  1 user,  load average: 9.04, 9.07, 9.02
Tasks:  67 total,   5 running,  62 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  1.6% us, 98.4% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    226352k total,   221632k used,     4720k free,     8976k buffers
Swap:   767904k total,     1856k used,   766048k free,   188352k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 1571 root      25   0  2128  960  800 R 97.7  0.4   1000:39 syslogd
 1066 root      16   0  2992 1168  896 R  2.3  0.5  33:38.83 top
    1 root      15   0  2000  592  496 S  0.0  0.3   0:05.09 init
    2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 ksoftirqd/0
    3 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.04 events/0
    4 root      10  -5     0    0    0 D  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 khelper
    5 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kthread
   10 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:09.36 kblockd/0
   13 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khubd

Syslogd with 1000 minutes of runtime, and 98.4%  sys CPU seems very likely to be the cause of my problem.

The rootfs wasn't full just prior to the CIFS transfer.

nasgul:~# df / -i
Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/hdi1             128000   11330  116670    9% /
nasgul:~# df / -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdi1             1.9G  642M  1.3G  33% /

So, what's my next step here?  A factory reset would be more palatable after I'm convinced that my data has been successfully backed up to the new NAS box.   

What can I do to keep the box up while I do my transfers and verifications?

Thanks.