Right, Linux (and Windows for that matter), like to buffer disk writes. They save them up for a while and write when they have to, or when "too much time" has gone by... Since disk activity tends to cluster (lots of updates to nearby blocks at once), buffering speeds up access a ton (that is the scientific measure...).
On Windows there is a thing to remove removable media that you should use whenever you swap drives or memory cards or whatever to politely request that those buffers get written. On Linux, and unmount does mostly the same thing (unfortunately it doesn't guarantee that USB media gets written... in practice it seems to always work, but I am paranoid and make sure to wait a few seconds between the unmount and actually powering-down the drive). -- snarlydwarf ------------------------------------------------------------------------ snarlydwarf's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1179 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36521 _______________________________________________ unix mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/unix
