Comment by whartung
4 years ago
> That'd suck, but you would have lost the data anyways if the power loss occurred 2s before,
But if you knew power was failing, which is why you did the ^S in the first place, it would not just suck, it be worse than that because your expectations were shattered.
It's all fine and good to have the computers lie to you about what they're doing, especially if you're in on the gag.
But when you're not, it makes the already confounding and exasperating computing experience just that much worse.
Go back to floppies, at least you know the data is saved with the disk stops spinning.
>But if you knew power was failing, which is why you did the ^S in the first place, it would not just suck, it be worse than that because your expectations were shattered.
The only situation I can think of this being applicable is for a laptop running low on battery. Even then, my guess is that there is enough variance in terms of battery chemistry/operating conditions that you're already playing fast and loose with regards to your data if you're saving data when there's only a few seconds of battery left. I agree that that having it not lose data is objectively better than having it lose data, but that's why I characterized it as "not a big deal".
You've not been to my house.
Contractor: "Hi, we need to kill the power to the house now."
Me: "Oh, ok, let me shut down my computer."
And, everything I've been reading lately is simply that there's nothing safe about this. How is shutting down a computer ever safe now? How long do we have to wait to ensure our data is flushed correctly, by everything?
>Contractor: "Hi, we need to kill the power to the house now."
>Me: "Oh, ok, let me shut down my computer."
and they're killing the power 0.1 seconds after you told them the computer is shut down? If the drive only lost the last 2 or 3 seconds of writes, you'll be fine.
>And, everything I've been reading lately is simply that there's nothing safe about this. How is shutting down a computer ever safe now? How long do we have to wait to ensure our data is flushed correctly, by everything?
that's a good point. maybe the drives still get some residual power from the motherboard even when the computer is "off", and that's enough to finish the writes?