[LMB] AKICOTL: Technical question OT:

[James]

On Jan 23, 2008 8:23 PM, Mark Allums <mark at allums.com> wrote:
> It seems that XP doesn't allow drives classed as removable to be
> formatted with NTFS.  NTFS "volumes" are mounted with write caching
> enabled.  It is possible to turn off write caching for a drive, but
> Windows regards it as anathema, and it has a tendency not to "stick".
> Trying to turn off write caching for NTFS is futile--it will not stay
> off permanently.

Ah. I rarely format disks externally with NTFS, so I didn't know that.
Though, there are tricks to get NTFS where Windows doesn't want it
(e.g., on a floppy disk).

> I would have preferred for Microsoft to have used better judgment in
> making these rules, but we are stuck with their decisions.  A modern
> file system without archaic limits, but user-friendly, appears to be too
> much to ask for.  UNIX/Linux/etc. is not much better.  It is exceedingly
> difficult to format a USB flash drive in Linux.  For me, at least.  In
> Debian.  And one wouldn't want to use a modern file system with it,
> anyway.  Un*x is even more anal about write caching than Windows.  Sigh.

True, but I'm often tasked with fixing corrupted flash disks, memory
cards, etc using Linux. The partition table on those things usually
gets corrupted trivially easily, requiring a dd to zero the first few
sectors, fdisk to partition, then mkdosfs/mke2fs (or mkfs.ext2/3,
mkfs.vfat), and it's good as new. I find Windows' inability to fix a
corrupted partition table on a removable disk one of its biggest
downfalls. Which is why I end up having to fix it for a number of
people, because I have a Linux box at my desk.

The only real thing is I have to remember to sync before unplugging
the disk since Linux caches really aggressively. To the point where I
can dd, fdisk, and mkfs without it being committed. I have to remember
to sync before I unplug.

> (Splitting files is undesirable.  The whole purchase of a large and
> expensive 8G flash drive was in order to avoid this.)

Of course, what files are so big? Most of the time I tend to avoid big
files just to avoid issues with programs who may be programmed with
32-bit offsets.

James