On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:35:41 +0500, "Alexander E. Patrakov" said: > Ext3 means either hardware that supports barriers (not sure how to > check, and anyway I have to use encryption on the work laptop due to the > corporate policy) or disabling write cache (but, as Alan Cox said, this > shortens the lifespan of the disk). False dichotomy. This isn't an "either/or", as there's a *third* case: "understand the issues and risks involved if you have a write cache and no barrier support, and learn to deal with it". As you point out, if it's a laptop with a battery, the risk may be *very* low. Let's say there's a 1 in 10,000 chance that you'll trash a file system and need to restore from backups. That may be totally acceptable if you've already estimated a 1 in 500 chance of the whole damned laptop going walkies while you're not looking, and then you *still* need to be able to restore from backups onto a replacement machine. Yes, for some systems, the whole barriers/write cache thing is in fact very important. But for others, data loss due to spilled coffee is a bigger worry...
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