🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug13.040731.2286@cs.mcgill.ca> George Mitchell (passed on)
writes...
>
>The following article was taken from the PC WORLD ONLINE via the America
>Online BBS and is an important warning for all MS WINDOWS 3.1 users.
>
>The following information was passed on to PC WORLD ONLINE by PCW George,
>(George Campbell, a PC WORLD Editor).
>
>"After considerable testing, I have discovered a major problem with the 
>version of SmartDrive included with Windows 3.1. The default installation
>of SMARTDRV.EXE enables write caching on your hard disks. Most often this
>is not a problem but, under certain circumstances, it could crash your hard
>disk. A typical situation is described below :
>
>
>
>
>Tip from George Campbell (PCWGeorge)

George is correct that this is dangerous.  This, however, is neither a bug
nor a problem with the Win 3.1 smartdrive program.  

I have been using this smartdrive and a write-back cache for a few months, 
and I don't mind it at all.  The only trick is to call smartdrv /c prior to
rebooting.  As a matter of fact, it is not a bad idea to do this occasionally
as you are running (Anyone write a Windows cron utility? or a cron TSR?).  
Unix users (who have actually seen a console, or administer) are familiar 
with this potential difficulty, and have lived with it for years. 

The problem is PC users who don't think before they flip the switch, and 
Microsoft not trapping the warmboot vector to flush the cache before a 
warmboot.  Of course trapping a power-off is a little more difficult from 
the software side.

Matt Woodward