Re: Linux does not care for data integrity

Mark Lord
2005-05-16T13:50:18Z

>To make this explicit and unmistakable, Linux should be ashamed of
>having put its users' data at risk for as long as it has existed, and
>looking at how often I still get "barrier synch failed", it still does
>with the kernel SUSE Linux 9.3 shipped with.

With ATA drives, this is strictly a userspace "policy" decision.

Most of us want longer lifespan and 2X the performance from our hardware,
and use UPSs to guarantee continuous power & survivability.

Others want to live more dangerously on the power supply end,
but still be safe on the filesystem end -- no guarantees there,
even with "hdparm -W0" to disable the on-drive cache.

Pulling power from a writing drive is ALWAYS a bad idea,
and can permanently corrupt the track/cylinder that was being
written. This will toast a filesystem regardless of how careful
or proper the write flushes were done.

Write caching on the drive is not as big an issue as
good reliable power for this.

Cheers