On 6/7/2011 10:26, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> In which way is suddenly removing a USB flash drive different from suddenly
> ejecting a floppy disk?

It's not. It'll screw up your USB drive also if you remove it without 
flushing the buffers.

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

Because people have learned they can't just yank out a USB disk and think 
it'll be OK.  Whereas the old versions of DOS said "once you come back to 
the command prompt, it's safe to take out the 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...)


There ya go.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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