XFS: the filesystem of the future? [LWN.net]

XFS: the filesystem of the future?

Posted Feb 2, 2012 1:39 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
In reply to: XFS: the filesystem of the future? by magila
Parent article: XFS: the filesystem of the future?

when I talk about a drive lying, I'm not talking about normal write caching, I'm talking about it either not respecting write cache settings, or lying about data integrity commands that are supposed to work even in the face of write caching (cache flush commands for example)

most consumer drives don't have these problems, but a few have been found to have them.

unfortunately you cannot just assume that newer dries will not have the problem. On the database mailing lists you see a couple drive models every year where someone runs across the problem yet again.

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XFS: the filesystem of the future?

Posted Feb 2, 2012 2:40 UTC (Thu) by magila (subscriber, #49627) [Link]

"On the database mailing lists you see a couple drive models every year where someone runs across the problem yet again."

I'd be rather surprised if that were the case. The code that handles cache flushing isn't something which usually changes between models. If a manufacturer's firmware had a bug in that area I'd expect to see it across the board, not just randomly poping up periodically on different SKUs.

XFS: the filesystem of the future?

Posted Feb 2, 2012 13:11 UTC (Thu) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link]

> The code that handles cache flushing isn't something which usually changes between models. If a manufacturer's firmware had a bug …

You won't get any manufacturer to admit it, but this is not a bug, it's a feature (to get higher benchmark numbers).

XFS: the filesystem of the future?

Posted Feb 2, 2012 17:38 UTC (Thu) by magila (subscriber, #49627) [Link]

You might not believe it, but I can say based on first hand experience that hard drive manufacturers take data integrity very seriously. None of them would risk losing customer data just to gain extra performance. The potential backlash from data loss would be far worse than scoring lower on a benchmark.

Plus the people running benchmarks, especially for tier 1 OEMs, aren't stupid. Lying about cache flushes is pretty easy to detect so the likelihood of getting away with it is pretty low right from the start. Pissing off OEMs is another thing hard drive manufactures would never, ever take risks with.