Forced Writes vs. Buffered Writes
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When an InterBase Server performs forced writes (also referred to as synchronous writes), it physically writes data to disk whenever the database performs an (internal) write operation.
If forced writes are not enabled, then even though InterBase performs a write, the data may not be physically written to disk, since operating systems buffer disk writes. If there is a system failure before the data is written to disk, then information can be lost.
Performing forced writes ensures data integrity and safety, but slow performance. In particular, operations that involve data modification are slower.
Forced writes are enabled or disabled in the Database Properties dialog. For more information, refer to Setting Database Properties.