What's the correct way to check for a general error when sending data to an fstream?

UPDATE: My main concern regards some things I've been hearing about a delay between output and any data being physically written to the hard disk. My assumption was that the command "save_file_obj << save_str" would only send data to some kind of buffer and that the following check "if (save_file_obj.bad())" would not be any use in determining if there was an OS or hardware problem. I just wanted to know what was the definitive "catch all" way to send a string to a file and check to make certain that it was written to the disk, before carrying out any following actions such as closing the program.

I have the following code...

int Saver::output()
{
    save_file_handle.open(file_name.c_str());
    if (save_file_handle.is_open())
    {
        save_file_handle << save_str.c_str();

        if (save_file_handle.bad())
        {
            x_message("Error - failed to save file");
            return 0;
        }

        save_file_handle.close();

        if (save_file_handle.bad())
        {
            x_message("Error - failed to save file");
            return 0;
        }

        return 1;
    }
    else
    {
        x_message("Error - couldn't open save file");
        return 0;
    }
}