> When using ATA drives, I have to make a choice between write caching or soft > updates, since write caching with soft updates creates an unsafe situation.
I assume by 'write caching' you mean async. No. You have that wrong. async is always unsafe. Everything else you say says that you consider performance more important than safety. There is no balance. We could remove the options that provide rope, but then the amount of whiners would increase..
