X25-M G2 160GB / Fake commited IO after a power outage !

[idata]

With its write cache enabled, a X18-M X25-M or X25-E is expected to WRITES all io that is flushed...but it looks like it does NOT.

...and disabling the write cache looks like rendering so bad SSD write performance that one should stay in the HDD market...

Anyone has some INTEL official posts about this "pull the plug" nightmare for their SSD ?

NB: Please read http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=121424 where they had some reproducible "pull the plug" test using basic io scenario (dbms used to write increments and display current value on the terminal, power outage, reboot, check the difference between the dbms and shown numbers)

[idata · Accepted solution]

Looks like it's sorted out on the G3 drives:

http://www.anandtech.com/tag/storage

[idata]

This means the G2 are NOT reliable for the Enterprise world !!!

[idata]

The only Intel drive supporting enterprise use is the G1 X25-E.

G1 and G2 drives do not store data in cache. The G3's will, however they have a power safe write cache feature.

If power goes down unexpectedly it makes no difference what storage medium you use, you face the risk of losing/ corrupting data, which is why enterprise applications always have power back up systems.

[idata]

No. A drive usually COMMIT a write io when it is COMMITed...which is NOT the G2 way to work.

Most HDD used in RAID have their write cache disabled for this reason, and the raid card has its own battery to backup a power outage. In this G2 case, the problem is that disabling the write cache looks like rendering the SSD so slow it's a nonsense buy vs a HDD.