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<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="ts_ide-sata-flush">
  <title>Responding to Guest IDE/SATA Flush Requests</title>
  
  <body>
    <p> If required, the virtual disk images can be flushed when the guest issues the IDE FLUSH
      CACHE command. Normally these requests are ignored for improved performance. The parameters
      below are only accepted for disk drives. They must not be set for DVD drives. </p>
    <p>
        To enable flushing for IDE disks, issue the following command:
      </p>
    <pre xml:space="preserve">$ VBoxManage setextradata <varname>VM-name</varname> "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#[<varname>x</varname>]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0</pre>
    <p><codeph>[<varname>x</varname>]</codeph> specifies the
        disk. Enter <codeph>0</codeph> for device 0 on the primary
        channel, <codeph>1</codeph> for device 1 on the primary
        channel, <codeph>2</codeph> for device 0 on the secondary
        channel, or <codeph>3</codeph> for device 1 on the secondary
        channel.
      </p>
    <p>
        To enable flushing for SATA disks, issue the following command:
      </p>
    <pre xml:space="preserve">$ VBoxManage setextradata <varname>VM-name</varname> "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#[x]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0</pre>
    <p>
        The value [x] that selects the disk can be a value between 0 and
        29.
      </p>
    <p>
        Note that this does not affect the flushes performed according
        to the configuration described in
        <xref href="ts_config-periodic-flush.dita#ts_config-periodic-flush"/>. Restoring the
        default of ignoring flush commands is possible by setting the
        value to 1 or by removing the key.
      </p>
  </body>
  
</topic>
