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Your Hard Drive Lies to You

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the say-it-ain't-so dept.

fenderdb writes "Brad Fitzgerald of LiveJournal fame has written a utility and a quick article on how all hard drives from the consumer level to the highest level 'enterprise' grade SCSI and SATA drives do not obey the fsync() function. Manufacturers are blatantly sacrificing integrity in favor of scoring higher on 'pure speed' performance benchmarking."

21 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Hardly a new thing... by |>>? · · Score: 4, Funny

    Since when do computers do what you mean?

    --
    |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno..
    1. Re:Hardly a new thing... by Clay+Pigeon+-TPF-VS- · · Score: 5, Funny

      You must be new here. Computers always do what you tell them to do in the command line. What, you're using a gui? Well that's your fault then.

      --
      Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
    2. Re:Hardly a new thing... by pyrrhonist · · Score: 5, Funny
      Computers always do what you tell them to do in the command line.

      They sure do.

      $ rm -rf * .o
      $ ls -a
      . ..
      $
      FUCK!!!!!

      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
    3. Re:Hardly a new thing... by pyropunk51 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I really hate this damned machine!
      I wish that I could sell it.
      It never does quite what I want,
      But only what I tell it!

      --
      double penetration; //ouch
    4. Re:Hardly a new thing... by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 4, Funny

      Is there a difference? ;-)

      I don't know about you, but when I mod slashdot, I'm almost always drunk or stoned. Really, it's the only way to fit in.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  2. What's this? by binaryspiral · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hard drive manufacturers screwing over customers? Why, who would have thought?

    1 billion bytes equals 1 gigabyte - since when?

    Dropped MTBF right after reducing the 3 year standard wrty to a 1 year - good timing.

    Now this?

    Wow what a track record of consumer loving...

    1. Re:What's this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Actualy you are wrong.

      1024 is always "Kilo". 1000 is "thou".

      So a kilometer is 1024 meters? Thanks for the correction! From now on I'll start saying "thoumeters" when I mean "1000 meters".

    2. Re:What's this? by krymsin01 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Down with the kilometer. Up with the thoumeter!

      --
      stuff
    3. Re:What's this? by pyrrhonist · · Score: 4, Funny
      2^30 bytes = 1 gibibyte.

      AaARaaGGgHHhh! I simply loathe the IEC binary prefix names.

      Kibibits sounds like dog food.

      "Kibibits, Kibibits, I'm gonna get me some Kibibits..."

      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
    4. Re:What's this? by darien · · Score: 3, Funny

      No need to get all holier-than-thou.

    5. Re:What's this? by operagost · · Score: 2, Funny

      My computer gets forty gibibytes to the thoumeter, and that's the ways I likes it!

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    6. Re:What's this? by pyrrhonist · · Score: 2, Funny
      So you prefer ambiguity? I'm sorry, but "pyrrhonist doesn't like the sound of the word" is NO reason to continue using ambiguous language.

      Relax, it was supposed to be a jo....

      waitaminute....

      You're the guy who came up with these prefixes aren't you?

      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  3. ...and Statistics. by Kaenneth · · Score: 4, Funny

    So, do you think someone typed "Nuclear weapons are being developed by the government of Iraq.^H^Hn." just before the power went out?

  4. In other news.... by ToraUma · · Score: 5, Funny

    96% of Livejournal users replied, "What's a hard drive? Is that like a modem?"

    1. Re:In other news.... by ameoba · · Score: 3, Funny

      No. It's memory. I just can't figure out why all these games that say 512MB is optimal are runnign so slow when I have 120GB.

      --
      my sig's at the bottom of the page.
  5. Seems fair enough: We lie to our hardrives too by MonsieurCoward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... "Swear to you there's no pr0n there !!"

    --
    Mcow.
  6. Damn processor industry... by fo0bar · · Score: 3, Funny

    using the wrong definitions to make their products seem bigger. I bought a P4 2.4GHz CPU the other day, and was shocked to find it wasn't 2,576,980,377.6Hz like it should be! Lying thieves...

    1. Re:Damn processor industry... by spectecjr · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ooops. Make that 2,400,000,000 not 2,400,000,000,000. That's the problem with big numbers - it's like spelling bananananananananananana - once you start you can't stop.

      --
      Coming soon - pyrogyra
    2. Re:Damn processor industry... by ShagratTheTitleless · · Score: 3, Funny
      2,400,000,000,000 cycles per second

      Fucking Trillahertz! or is it Terrahertz! Either way, imagine a Beowulf Clu....[Post terminated by Karma Police]

      --
      Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
  7. Re:Marketing created the 'confusion' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    But in the long run, you gotta admit the change makes sense, from a standardisation point of view.

    Next thing you're going to tell me is that they're going to make us give up pounds and miles.

  8. Re:Err... "lying" is the default setting. RTFM. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Remember, users are stupid, have the screen state:
    'Making sure your data doesn't get corrupted, DON'T TURN THE COMPUTER OFF UNTIL WE SAY SO!'