disk write caching opinions

B

bigearsbilly

I was reading Absolute FreeBSD (good book)
and there was a mention that data is a lot safer
with disk write caching off. i.e.
hw.ata.wc=0

so i tried it and it turned my dual core AMD64 into an 8086
when I did any disk writes.
(I copied a 4G file from a USB disk to /usr)
the write took about 900s opposed to 227s
all my desktop slowed down as to become unusable.

so I turned it back on.
So, my question is do you think there is an appreciable increase
in danger of data loss?

i.e any one experienced it.
 
Turning write caching off is pretty detrimental to performance as you have noticed. IMO it's the filesystem's job not to make a mess of it even when the power goes out. AFAIK UFS2 does do a decent job but ZFS is a lot better in this respect thought.
 
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