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Date:      Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:39:08 -0700
From:      Stephen Byan <Stephen.Byan@quantum.com>
To:        "'Marius Bendiksen'" <mbendiks@eunet.no>, Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        freeBSD-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG, "'fs@freeBSD.org'" <fs@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: disable write caching with softupdates? 
Message-ID:  <8133266FE373D11190CD00805FA768BF055BD1DB@shrcmsg1.tdh.qntm.com>

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Marius Bendiksen [mailto:mbendiks@eunet.no] wrote:

> Actually, you can do certain optimizations based on the 
> knowledge of how
> the disk behaves, if you have the ability to use this knowledge in a
> realtime system. I unfortunately misphrased so as to state 
> that FFS did
> accurately use this information, which it does not. It would, however,
> be possible to design a system which exploits this, thus improving
> performance by, amongst other things, removing rotational latency, and
> being aware of bad sector remapping, seek timings, zone layout, et al.
> This would require realtime operation and fine-grained timing, though.
> There are certainly other things one would benefit from first.
> 
> And this still relies on having the drive provide the correct 
> information,
> including such things as temperature, air moisture levels, or 
> whatever.
> This, as you pointed out, is not reported by disk drives.

I think this is one of the more interesting things about the NASD and
object-based disk proposals. Since they push the file-store layer down to
the disk, the block allocation policy can take all of these things into
account, without having to specify an intermediate abstraction layer to
convey the necessary information, since the form of that information changes
frequently as a reflection of the volatility of the underlying technology in
the disk drive.

Regards,
-Steve

Steve Byan
<stephen.byan@quantum.com>
Design Engineer
MS 1-3/E23
333 South Street
Shrewsbury, MA 01545
(508)770-3414
fax: (508)770-2604 


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