On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:35:41 +0500, "Alexander E. Patrakov" said:

> Ext3 means either hardware that supports barriers (not sure how to 
> check, and anyway I have to use encryption on the work laptop due to the 
> corporate policy) or disabling write cache (but, as Alan Cox said, this 
> shortens the lifespan of the disk).

False dichotomy.  This isn't an "either/or", as there's a *third* case:

"understand the issues and risks involved if you have a write cache and
no barrier support, and learn to deal with it".

As you point out, if it's a laptop with a battery, the risk may be *very* low.
Let's say there's a 1 in 10,000 chance that you'll trash a file system and
need to restore from backups.

That may be totally acceptable if you've already estimated a 1 in 500 chance
of the whole damned laptop going walkies while you're not looking, and then
you *still* need to be able to restore from backups onto a replacement machine.

Yes, for some systems, the whole barriers/write cache thing is in fact very
important.  But for others, data loss due to spilled coffee is a bigger worry...