Re: (reiserfs) sync: why disk cannot spin down

From: Marc Lehmann (pcg@goof.com)
Date: Tue Aug 01 2000 - 02:34:22 EST

On Mon, Jul 31, 2000 at 02:27:23PM -0700, Crispin Cowan <crispin@wirex.com> wrote:
> How much risk of a corrupted file system do you get from this approach? I'd like to

With reiserfs, zero. (well, zero additional risk).

I wwould guess even with ext2 you get zero additional risk: unless your
machine dies there is no corruption at all. If it dies it might get corrupted
independent of when the last write access was.

Programs relying on safe storage (e.g. MTAs) generally sync their files
(as is required by SMTP for example), and this forces a write.

> spin down my HD on my laptop, but I REALLY depend on this machine as my primary
> workstation, so I'd rather not lose the FS ;-)

Then you have to spin up every xx seconds OR get rid of atime at least for
most directories.

Hopefully, reiserfs will provide selective noatime,nodiratime,sync flags
soon. 

-- 
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      ---==---(_)__  __ ____  __       Marc Lehmann      +--
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    The choice of a GNU generation                       |
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