[Randall R Schulz]
[BandiPat]
Simple fix is to edit your /etc/fstab and remove the word sync from your floppy line. [...] You'll be amazed at the speed it writes to your floppy after that!
That's mostly illusory. [...] But in either case the amount of time it takes to write a given amount of data to the device is the same.
It's true that the memory cache may give the illusion of speed, and that one undoubtedly has to be careful, waiting that all of the floppy has been written for real before removing it. On the other hand, when a flurry of files are copied to the floppy, those floppy areas holding directories, and information about sector allocation and linking, are being read and rewritten many times, at least once per file written. So, letting the system use the cache brings a real benefit, because all those updates are all done in memory first, and the combined result physically written only once to the floppy. -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca