diff --git a/06_gpu_and_ml/flan_t5/flan_t5_finetune.py b/06_gpu_and_ml/flan_t5/flan_t5_finetune.py
index 7d1964f30..b56c2fc7a 100644
--- a/06_gpu_and_ml/flan_t5/flan_t5_finetune.py
+++ b/06_gpu_and_ml/flan_t5/flan_t5_finetune.py
@@ -52,15 +52,16 @@
 stub.restart_tracker_dict = modal.Dict.new()
 
 
-def track_restarts(restart_tracker: modal.Dict):
+def track_restarts(restart_tracker: modal.Dict) -> int:
     if not restart_tracker.contains("count"):
         preemption_count = 0
         print(f"Starting first time. {preemption_count=}")
-        restart_tracker["count"] = preemption_count = 0
+        restart_tracker["count"] = preemption_count
     else:
         preemption_count = restart_tracker.get("count") + 1
         print(f"Restarting after pre-emption. {preemption_count=}")
         restart_tracker["count"] = preemption_count
+    return preemption_count
 
 
 # ## Finetuning Flan-T5 on XSum dataset
@@ -72,6 +73,7 @@ def track_restarts(restart_tracker: modal.Dict):
     gpu="A10g",
     timeout=7200,
     volumes={VOL_MOUNT_PATH: output_vol},
+    _allow_background_volume_commits=True,
 )
 def finetune(num_train_epochs: int = 1, size_percentage: int = 10):
     from datasets import load_dataset
@@ -81,10 +83,9 @@ def finetune(num_train_epochs: int = 1, size_percentage: int = 10):
         DataCollatorForSeq2Seq,
         Seq2SeqTrainer,
         Seq2SeqTrainingArguments,
-        TrainerCallback,
     )
 
-    track_restarts(stub.restart_tracker_dict)
+    restarts = track_restarts(stub.restart_tracker_dict)
 
     # Use size percentage to retrieve subset of the dataset to iterate faster
     if size_percentage:
@@ -148,18 +149,6 @@ def preprocess(batch):
         pad_to_multiple_of=batch_size,
     )
 
-    class CheckpointCallback(TrainerCallback):
-        def __init__(self, volume):
-            self.volume = volume
-
-        def on_save(self, args, state, control, **kwargs):
-            """
-            Event called after a checkpoint save.
-            """
-            if state.is_world_process_zero:
-                print("running commit on modal.Volume after model checkpoint")
-                self.volume.commit()
-
     training_args = Seq2SeqTrainingArguments(
         # Save checkpoints to the mounted volume
         output_dir=str(VOL_MOUNT_PATH / "model"),
@@ -172,7 +161,7 @@ def on_save(self, args, state, control, **kwargs):
         logging_steps=100,
         evaluation_strategy="steps",
         save_strategy="steps",
-        save_steps=750,
+        save_steps=100,
         save_total_limit=2,
         load_best_model_at_end=True,
     )
@@ -180,14 +169,16 @@ def on_save(self, args, state, control, **kwargs):
     trainer = Seq2SeqTrainer(
         model=model,
         args=training_args,
-        callbacks=[CheckpointCallback(output_vol)],
         data_collator=data_collator,
         train_dataset=tokenized_xsum_train,
         eval_dataset=tokenized_xsum_test,
     )
 
     try:
-        trainer.train(resume_from_checkpoint=True)
+        resume = restarts > 0
+        if resume:
+            print("resuming from checkpoint")
+        trainer.train(resume_from_checkpoint=resume)
     except KeyboardInterrupt:  # handle possible preemption
         print("received interrupt; saving state and model")
         trainer.save_state()