From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 17:03:09 +0000 From: David Eckhardt Message-ID: References: , <200407131148.29808.boris.maroshev@itcollege.ee> Subject: Re: [9fans] Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 write cache? Topicbox-Message-UUID: c2051f20-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 In article <200407131148.29808.boris.maroshev@itcollege.ee>, Boris Maryshev <9fans@cse.psu.edu> wrote: >It isn't enabled by default on all IDE HDDs AFAIK. Some recommend to enable >it, because you get increased throughput, but some UNIX vendors do not, as >you can get filesystem corruption in case of power failure. Journalling >doesn't help here either IIRC. Sam Hopkins (sah@softcardsystems.com) pointed out to me in private mail this charming message: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0304.1/0450.html which is a post from a Maxtor employee to the effect that IDE drives are allowed to arbitrarily re-order writes if the "write cache" is turned on. Are fossil & venti ok with this? Should the sd driver try to turn off the "write cache" feature on IDE drives? Dave Eckhardt Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: University of Bath Computing Services, UK Keywords: Cc: -- Dennis Davis, BUCS, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK D.H.Davis@bath.ac.uk