Re: RES: Initial database loading and IDE x SCSI

Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> Mark Lewis wrote:
>
> >
> > The naive approach works on IDE drives because they don't (usually)
> > honor the request to write the data immediately, so it can fill its
> > write cache up with several megabytes of data and write it out to the
> > disk at its leisure.
> >
>
> FWIW - If you are using MacOS X or Windows, then later SATA (in
> particular, not sure about older IDE) will honor the request to write
> immediately, even if the disk write cache is enabled.
>
> I believe that Linux 2.6+ and SATA II will also behave this way (I'm
> thinking that write barrier support *is* in 2.6 now - however you would
> be wise to follow up on the Linux kernel list if you want to be sure!)
>
> In these cases data integrity becomes similar to SCSI - however, unless
> you buy SATA specifically designed for a server type workload (e.g WD
> Raptor), then ATA/SATA tend to fail more quickly if used in this way
> (e.g. 24/7, hot/dusty environment etc).

The definitive guide to servers vs. desktop drives is:

  http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/whitepaper/D2c_More_than_Interface_ATA_vs_SCSI_042003.pdf

--
  Bruce Momjian   http://candle.pha.pa.us
  EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +