>> So, essentially, your entire argument is "the user can eject the disk at
>> any time, therefore it's unsafe to cache anything".
>>
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the contents of the disk be
>> irrepairably corrupted *anyway*? That's why there's a disk activity
>> light; so you don't hit eject while it's still writing stuff.
>
> Having actually done this at several points in the past, I can assure you
> that Darren is correct.  Caching removable devices tends to be *very* bad
> for data integrity.
>
> That's why, for example, in Windows (and on Linux), you need to "safely
> remove" USB flash drives - they are cached for performance reasons.

In which way is suddenly removing a USB flash drive different from 
suddenly ejecting a floppy disk?

So why is it perfectly OK to cache a USB flash drive, but completely 
unthinkable to cache a floppy disk?

(Also, I'm sure I saw somewhere a setting in Windows to select whether 
the "safely remove hardware" thing is optional or not. The default 
setting is worse performance in exchange for pulling the drive /not/ 
completely screwing the filesystem. I'm guessing M$ found that too many 
people actually did this...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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