> SATA ext3 predates SATA, briefly. While SATA was commonly used with ext3 soon after ext3's release, a lot of the hardware Ted Ts'o is probably referring to w

> SATA ext3 predates SATA, briefly. While SATA was commonly used with ext3 soon after ext3's release, a lot of the hardware Ted Ts'o is probably referring to would have been ATA-4/UDMA (or SCSI). > while the CPU is still executing instructions The problem Ts'o described doesn't involve the CPU: DRAM tends to go insane and starts returning garbage long before the DMA engine and the hard drive stops functioning. A bus-mastering ATA (or SCSI) controller - possibly on the motherboard, possibly an expansion card, regardless almost certainly PCI - may be copying data from RAM directly as Direct Memory Access. > the reset logic on the main board will halt everything In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is, especially when cheap, poorly-designed hardware is involved.