I've just been reading about disk write caching and am a little undecided as to whether I should enable it or not so thought I'd canvass some opinions. First could people confirm whether the following statements are correct or not: 1) XP enables disk write caching by default for internal drives? 2) Vista disables disk write caching by default for internal drives? 3) Both XP and Vista disable disk write caching by default for removable drives (thumb drives, external hard drives etc.)? I understand the risk in theory of enabling write caching but I wonder how risky it is in practice. 4) Do you enable write caching for internal drives? 5) Do you enable write caching for removable drives? 6) Is the performance gain from write caching noticeable in day to day stuff? 7) Has anyone lost or had data corrupted due to write caching? All comments appreciated
Depends. It has more to do with the default nature of HDD firmware. Some HDD from WD are enabled by default. on XP, it's at Device Manager --> Disk Drives --> Properties --> Policy Yes for XP, No for 2K, i don't think Vista is enabled by default either. Generally yes. But i usually have heavy-duty APC UPS for those systems. On HDD controler cards, that's something else.. i disable them due to compatibility issues. On Systems without UPS, i disable all HDDs' w-cache. No. Depends on what you do. If your work tend to flood HDD in bursts. i think it's more meaningful to enable it. How much performance gain.. don't know. Wasn't important for me so didn't bench it. Yes but rarely. Data corruption annoys me... but not as much as OS X moving or replacing folder flaws. Lost months of work there. My experience had to do with HDD controller cards' w-cache issues. Standard motherboard HDD... hmm only once or twice with corrupted files. Bad power supply's fault.
Thanks for the reply Ryan. Interesting. Both HD's (Raptor & Maxtor 120) in my xp machine had write caching enabled while the HD in my vista laptop has it disabled so combined with what I've read it seemed to all be os dependent. If the HD's firmware wants to write cache by default does that override the os setting? I have no ups and I only use the hard drive in normal ways like just about anyone so nothing out of the ordinary. Given those 2 points would your opinion be that I'd likely not notice a significant increase in performance and that therefore the risk is too great relative to the meagre benefits?
UPS is not critical in most places. I have them not because my office has poor or unstable power, it's to prepare for the electrician or someone doing something wacky and cause the main safety switch to go off. To clarify.. XP has W-cache enabled for HDD, not for Flash Drives. Same for Vista. Whether W-Cache will be enabled by default or not is propably programmed in the HDD firmware. The OS only detects the default setting. Performance difference IMHO is minute for casual computing. Even gaming doesn't feel terribly faster with or without it. That could depend on the way some games are coded also. I'm not terribly technically experienced in this except through casual tweaking with HDD RAID and controller cards. Adding last point... I don't see a real need to disable Write Cache. Keep things at default may be the best solution.
Sorry do you mean this is what you have your drives set to or that these are the os defaults? Do you mean the os will detect the HD firmware's default setting and will use that setting in the "Policies" section of device manager even if it means changing the os's normal default option? E.g. vista defaults to disable write caching and Firmware defaults to enable write caching = vista changes to enable write caching? Well I'm pretty much convinced then to turn off write caching on all my drives if the benefit is negligible. Even a small risk of data corruption is not worth it unless it's offset by noticeable performance gains which write caching appears not to provide. Anybody else care to chime in with an opinion?
I have been asking myself this same question, and while I have had loads of trouble with my computer over the years, I've come to realize write caching has always been enabled, and my computer has had power losses / cat hit the reset button etc many many times. Nothing too bad though, i've never had a situation where i've completely lost data. I did notice however that in Vista there is a "write caching extreme" function. Under drive policies there is write caching as well as 'advanced performance', which 'further improves performance but increasese risk of data loss' now this one is new to me! I wonder if i should enable it..
