From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 08:25:21 +0000
From: David Eckhardt <davide+receptionist@cs.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <ccvpdp$q0e$1@wolfberry.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: [9fans] Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 write cache?
Topicbox-Message-UUID: bf477c7e-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

Am I being overly paranoid?

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda7200.7.pdf
is the "data sheet" for the SATA version of the Seagate Barracuda.

Section 4.3.2 ("Set Features command") on logical page 31 (physical
page 41) seems to indicate that the drive defaults to handling sector
writes via a write-back RAM cache, which the host OS can disable.

Is it just me or is this a very bad default except (maybe) for
battery-backed systems?  Is this a standard thing in IDE disks
(either the feature number or the default setting), something
Plan 9 should watch out for, nothing for me to worry my pretty
little head about, ...?

Dave Eckhardt