sync is good because it causes most saving applications to wait for the file transfer to complete before resuming. It is highly recommended for drives you are likely to forget to unmount, such as usb-sticks. Now if this is for back-up, I would still leave it on sync. That way you get a true transfer status to the media irregardless of the buffers. I doubt you are in a rush to return to the main screen of your backup app.
btw - unmounting does flush the kernel buffers. That is why you must unmount any drive before removing it. sync just minimizes the risk of early withdraw. On 10/11/05, Rob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 01:08:31AM -0400, Angelo Bertolli wrote: > > I have a drive that I will be using for backup. It will be mounted only > > when backups need to be made, and then unmounted. I was wondering if > > there was any advantage to using sync vs async for this kind of a job. > > Probably not since unmounting the drive will sync it. > > Unmounting the drive does sync it. The only real use for sync is when > `halt` actually did what it was supposed to do (another rant) and halted > the machine - then you would want the os to flush its internal buffers. > When you unmount a drive, all of the buffers are flushed. > > - Rob > . >
