Re: obscure question?

Nuno,
now you've given me a new question... what does AFAIK stand for??

seriously, thanks... i was sure there was an OS-related determinant behind the frequency at which the cache is written to disk. but now you've raised other questions in my mind like... what other effects does sector size have? for instance, if i wanted to create a partition with smallest allowable sectors (whatever that number is) would this affect performance on disk i/o for the other data stored there? if so, could i instead create a small partition of that size sector dedicated to spooling files? what if that partition existed on a remote nt box to which i would spool across the network, would the sector size of the remote disk still correspond to the frequency of writes to disk or does nt write a temp file locally and then move it to the remote disk?

i'm not trying to be a pain here, i know the benefit realized would not equal the effort to carry this all out... i'm really just curious from a theortical standpoint.... if you happen to know (you sound intimately involved with nt), please feel free to respond, but maybe i should post this question to an nt group and see if anyone bites? in any case, thanks for the info... now you've really piqued my curiosity!

"Nuno Souto" <nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam> wrote in message news:3bcd7019.6811573_at_news...
> In a valiant and sublime effort,Jason
> dipped a thumbnail in soot and doodled:
>
> >out. i'm guessing this is an OS-related issue since i don't think Oracle
> >sets this parameter. i'm running on Windows NT 4 and Oracle 8i. i
suppose
> >there might be another way to monitor the script, but i'm really curious
> >about this. has anyone else ever wondered about this... or am i a lone
> >nut-case???
> >
> >
>
> Interesting question. AFAIK:
>
> NT uses a write-behind cache by default. So you'll never see the
> output immediately after it's created. Also, the frequency of writes
> to disk is directly linked to the sector size the partition was
> formatted with. Usually, the C: drive is formatted by default with a
> sector size of 512. Other drive/partitions may be formatted with
> other default sector sizes, usually larger than 512. You may well
> find that you can follow the output better if you spool to a file oin
> the C: drive.
>
>
> Cheers
> Nuno Souto
> nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam
Received on Wed Oct 17 2001 - 16:34:04 CDT