From: Linus Nielsen Feltzing <linus_at_haxx.se>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 18:13:15 +0100

Quoting Bruce Thompson <bruce_at_otherother.com>:
> As you mention there is potential for damage if a write fails
> badly. It seems to me that spinning up the disk is the biggest power
> drain and thus the most likely to fail if the batteries are low.

My general approach to disk writes are: don't write to the disk if it isn't
necessary. Updating the read access time falls into that category.

> Perhaps the access time could be written right after the initial read
> when starting a file.

Of course. When would we do it otherwise?

> Another possibility could be to check the battery
> level and if it's below a low watermark then don't do the write.

We already do that, actually.
 
> This does beg the question: Does the JB6K know what time it is?

No, it doesn't.

/Linus
Received on 2002-11-05