now hold on... 1) your saying that a 'hardware' based solution with a
caching controller can't cache one 'stripe' worth of data? If this is the
case the caching controller is pretty much useless. Most caching
controller's have at least 16mb of cache memory which should be enough to
cache a stripe worth of data. 2) Even if the application issues a fsync I
don't think it will actually flush the data out of the controllers cache.
Maybe the system buffer to the controller but the controller operates
independently of the operating system. The controller controls the cache not
the application.

Mark