Disabling write-behind on IDE drives, and SMART

Jim C. Nasby decibel at decibel.org
Thu Jan 20 13:39:08 PST 2005


Question one: how do I disable write caching on IDE drives? I know the
setting is hw.ata.wc=0, but where do I put that? In loader.conf? This is
FreeBSD 4.10, btw.

Also, has any thought been given to making the default 0, like it is for
SCSI devices? I'm honestly surprised and disappointed that the default
is speed over data integrity.

Question two: is there any support for SMART in FreeBSD? I see that
atacontrol cap displays the status (supported and disabled), but I don't
know of any way to turn it on. Likewise, what about the other options
shown by atacontrol cap?
-- 
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant               decibel at decibel.org 
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

Windows: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"
FreeBSD: "Are you guys coming, or what?"


More information about the freebsd-stable mailing list