| From: | Patrick Welche <prlw1(at)newn(dot)cam(dot)ac(dot)uk> |
|---|---|
| To: | Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> |
| Cc: | PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org>, "Kurt J(dot) Lidl" <lidl(at)pix(dot)net>, "Steven M(dot) Schultz" <sms(at)TO(dot)GD-ES(dot)COM> |
| Subject: | Re: Upgrading my BSDI box, again |
| Date: | 2003-07-30 13:50:11 |
| Message-ID: | 20030730145011.B20420@quartz.newn.cam.ac.uk |
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| Lists: | pgsql-hackers |
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 12:38:54AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> [ CC to Kurt and Steven on bsdi list.]
>
> Guys, I just replied to this email on the BSDi email list. The issue is
> that someone found that some(most?) IDE drives have write cache enabled,
> though the drives do not preserve the write cache data on power failure.
>
> I am surprised we have not heard of this failure before because I know
> most vendors who ship PostgreSQL test our crash recovery thoroughly.
> Are they testing only using SCSI drives?
>
> Below you will read that my Seagate SCSI drive has write cache disabled,
> but another guy has a Seagate IDE drive that has it enabled, though it
> loses data on power failure.
>
> Scarey!
>
> Does anyone have any more detailed information on this?
Not really, just that I had data corruption on SCSI disks which had write
cache enabled and tagged queueing. Disabling write cache has allowed them
to function flawlessly since. The moral seems to be: write cache gives
pretty performance figures, but you really want it swiched off.
Cheers,
Patrick
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