Link: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid5_gci920473,00.html
Quote: "FlushFileBuffers is an API call that forces all data for an open file handle to be flushed from the system cache and also sends a command to the disk to flush its cache (contrary to the name, this call affects all data stored in the device cache)" So FlushFileBuffers flushes ALL writes to disk, not just those of the specified file handle. According to that article, it looks like the recommended way to achieve good performance and integrity is to use FILE_FLAG_WRITE_THROUGH, not FlushFileBuffers. Quote: "FILE_FLAG_WRITE_THROUGH indicates that a device may not complete a write request until the data is committed to media. This is enforced through the use of the FUA flag" Then this flag should be enabled when writing to the journal log: Quote: "FILE_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL_SCAN informs the file system that the file will be accessed sequentially. This allows the file system to be more aggressive in caching and perform read ahead/write behind operations and also flushing/discarding buffers once the I/O has progressed beyond the location of the file contained within the buffer. Benchmarks have shown that FILE_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL_SCAN provides a negligible improvement in read throughput, but provides a noticeable improvement in write throughput." /Ludvig
