Greg Smith wrote: > On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Guy Thornley wrote: > > > I've yet to find a drive that lies about write completion. The problem > > is that the drives boot-up default is write-caching enabled (or perhaps > > the system BIOS sets it that way). If you turn an IDE disks write cache > > off explicity, using hdparm or similar, they behave. > > I found a rather ominous warning from SGI on this subject at > http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#wcache_query > > "[Disabling the write cache] is kept persistent for a SCSI disk. However, > for a SATA/PATA disk this needs to be done after every reset as it will > reset back to the default of the write cache enabled. And a reset can > happen after reboot or on error recovery of the drive. This makes it > rather difficult to guarantee that the write cache is maintained as > disabled." > > As I've been learning more about this subject recently, I've become > increasingly queasy about using IDE drives for databases unless they're > hooked up to a high-end (S|P)ATA controller. As far as I know the BIOS Yes, avoiding IDE for serious database servers is a conclusion I made long ago. -- Bruce Momjian bruce@xxxxxxxxxx EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
