Re: filmscanners: Vuescan 7.0.8 hang!

[Bill Ross <ross@cgl.ucsf.edu>]

        > Unless Windows is utterly lame (a possibility, granted), it
        > should be possible to flush each line of the logfile to disk
        > as it is written. Files should not disappear just because the
        > machine gets hung/rebooted, so the log should be retrievable.
        
        problem is with all advanced operating systems is that they 
        employ a write cache - i.e. sector will only be written after 
        a certain amount of time, to allow for a lot of writes to same 
        sector (i.e. directory/fat) to not slow the system, this is why 
        you will be seeing files 'disappear'. this is
        probably not your problem though..
        
        but, there are functions inside windows to fully flush the file buffers.
        
In Unix at least, the programmer can open the file for
synchronous disk access, i.e. the write does not complete
(the program waits) until the block is flushed, and this
happens immediately. I expect that Windows allows this too.

Bill Ross