From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Sep 27 0:34:50 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp04.primenet.com (smtp04.primenet.com [206.165.6.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99C7737B422 for ; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 00:34:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp04.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA08056; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 00:32:13 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr05.primenet.com(206.165.6.205) via SMTP by smtp04.primenet.com, id smtpdAAA6CaaLp; Wed Sep 27 00:32:04 2000 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr05.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA20534; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 00:34:33 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200009270734.AAA20534@usr05.primenet.com> Subject: Re: CD writers - recommendations To: dan@langille.org Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 07:34:33 +0000 (GMT) Cc: 1mazda1@phoenixdsl.com (1mazda1), chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <200009270707.TAA30714@ducky.nz.freebsd.org> from "Dan Langille" at Sep 27, 2000 07:07:30 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > I've also been told that IDE cd writers under FreeBSD are a problem. > What problem, I don't know. Anyone have any clues? I have experienced failures of IDE CDROM writers when a system is under load, since IDE does not support bus detach, and you have to feed the thing to keep it going. Without the ability to detach a disk operation and concurrently start the next write operation, you can fail. In a floppy driver or even a normal disk driver, you would simply reissue the failed operation; on a CDROM writer, by its nature, this can fail. I have learned the hard way on several disks (I thought the first was a fluke) to not load a system in any way, if it is doing an IDE CDROM burn. On the flip side of this, they are cheaper, and if you are willing to dedicate a machine for it, and copy over the CDROM images before burning them, instead of using NFS to access them, IDE can work with about a 1 in 14 loss rate (compared to a 1 in 72 loss rate for the Plextor SCSI I've used). NB: The numbers on the Plextor are skewed down, since I have not burnt 144 disks on the thing with a loss of 2, so I don't know anything other than the statistical failure; on the other hand, the 1 in 14 number for the IDE I used (don't know the brand, sorry: it was supposed top of the line) is a valid statistic over about 50 disks. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message