On Sun, 4 Sep 2005, Alan Stern wrote: > P.S.: Does anyone know how Windows behaves if a running program has files > open on a floppy disk (or a USB disk) across a Hibernate? I should try > the experiment... I tried it on my laptop, which has an old copy of Windows ME. The floppy disk situation is about what you'd expect. Even without putting the computer to sleep, you can remove a floppy disk while a program has an open file on it. Windows just puts up a screen asking you to replace the floppy, and things continue as if nothing happened. This is obviously an historical relic going back to the days of DOS. With the USB device, things are more interesting. If you unplug the device (even while it's not in use), Windows warns you not to do this without first getting permission by using the "Eject Removable Devices" button. If you try to press that button while a program has a file open on the device, Windows says that you can't remove the device right now and advises you to try again later. However... I put the laptop into Hibernate mode. To be absolutely sure this was a true snapshot-poweroff-resume cycle, I also unplugged the power cord and removed the battery. Then I removed and replaced the USB device and restarted the laptop. Everything worked smoothly; the file remained open and the program was able to continue reading it, well past the point where the I/O buffers needed to be refilled. If Windows ME can do this, Linux should be able to do it too. Alan Stern
