While this is true, it also may dramatically lower the mean time to
failure for your disk, due to increased ware and tear - consumer ATA
drives are designed to operate with the write cache on.
If you cannot afford to lose data due to poweroff corruption, then the
only viable solution is a RAID card that includes battery backup (e.g.
3Ware and Areca sell these).
Mark,
Thank you for clarifying. My comments were obscure and poorly
worded. You are correct. If one requires supreme data-safety with an
ATA drive, one must do things that will ultimately be
counter-productive for the longevity of your disks. Furthermore, (I
can fully attest) that they will be a significant hit on performance.
If you need high safety, speed, and retention, then the 3ware +
Battery backup is a low-cast solution. There are tons of higher cost
ones. most of me servers run with battery-backed RAID cards.
I also like to make scripts to remount the FSs with -o sync in the
case of power outage. That way, just in case the UPS actually fails
early (which happens at times), I don't lose data. I have had that
preference no matter what FS i use.
sincerely,
Joshua
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