[moneydance] Long Backups

[Patrick Wagstrom]

On Wed, 2006-05-10 at 09:02 -0400, Randall Pierce wrote:
> Can you tell me how I can check this? I am not sure I am clear about the
> "sync" issue. Thanks for your help.
> 
> Randy

This is only relevant if you're on Linux (at least I believe so).  Most
operating systems pool write requests in a cache and then perform the
writes as time permits.  This creates a more responsive system and
generally has few drawbacks (except if they power goes off suddenly).
Anyway, when a filesystem is mounted as "sync" under linux, it
effectively disables the write cache in the operating system and causes
all writes to be sent immediately to disk.  This is highly inefficient,
but saves some headaches.

If all that seems greek to you, just check to see if other writes to the
USB drive are slow.  Drag another file about the same size to the drive
and see how long it takes to copy.  Compare.

Hope this helps!

--Patrick