&gt; The difference between then and now is that new computers have enormous amounts of memory and use it to provide write-back caching.<p>Also, <i>not</i> syncing to disk immediately can improve the lifetime of flash media, which wasn&#x27;t a concern in the old days.<p>However, I&#x27;m somewhat disappointed by current filesystems not using journaling to make it possible to pull out a USB drive without harm (other than losing the latest writes).