Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:07:57 -0400 | From | Ric Wheeler <> | Subject | Re: [ANNOUNCE] Ramback: faster than a speeding bullet |
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Pavel Machek wrote: > Hi! > >>> Everyone who has write cache turned on for their hard drives is >>> running in a mode similar to ramback anyway (except for when the file >>> system is set to force writes to the platter, but that is rare). >>> Admittedly, software crashes rarely cause the write cache to be lost, >>> but hardware failures do, practically every time. >> On the contrary - the hard disk cache is managed by the barrier logic in >> the kernel, and the ordering even on failures is fairly predictable. > > Well, not even all modern hdds support barriers... It would be really > nice to have _safe_ settings by default here... >
The only really safe default is to disable the write cache by default or possibly dynamically disable the write cache when barriers are not supported by a drive. Both have a severe performance impact and I am not sure that for most casual users it is a good trade.
ric
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