cant disable disk write cache

[gi0rgi0]

I had enabled this but I want to disable it but it wont let me select that option.
So how can I do this ? Any suggestions ? TIA

 

[Willoughbyva]

What OS? Are you using via drivers or regular XP? If you are using via there is an option in the little program to do it. Or you could delete the controller in the device manager and let windows pick it back up.


Perry

 

[gi0rgi0]

Im using xp and im not sure what you mean by via drivers. Are you talking about the chipset drivers ?
I have an nforce chipset. But thanks for the suggestion. I may try the deleting of the controller.

 

[corkyg]

My experience is that XP will not let you disable W/C except for external devices.

Anyway, the normal way is go to Device Manager, right click on the drive in question, select Properties, then Policies, and check the top box - Optimize for Quick Removal.

 

[gi0rgi0]

Yeah, but thats my problem corky. Im not able to select the top box . But like you mentioned maybe im just not able to to disable it once enabled.
Do you think a fresh install of xp would undo it ? Also this might not be the reason for the problem im having as ive heard there might be some
issues with my mainboard.

 

[corkyg]

I had the problem where the top checkbox was grayed out - reason was, Windows did not see the device as an external, removable item. It was an external SATA HDD enclosure, but it was connected to an internal SATA port on the mobo. So, XP assumed it was an internal device, and internal devices are not able to have write caching disabled for some reason.

Anyway, it resulted in random delayed write errors. I put the drive back inside the case directly connected to the same SATA port, and it works perfectly there. Go figure!

 

[gi0rgi0]

Is there a free program I can download to test if my harddrive is running good ? I dont seem to have any problems.
But want to be sure. The problem I wa having was stuttering in games and I thought that was it, but it turns out that it
was most like that I had my video card overclocked. When I set it back to default it played fine. I guess the mobo i just
got, which is a msi neo2 platinum, others were having the same problem with it. I guess it doesnt lik OC'd video cards, hehe.

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: gi0rgi0
Is there a free program I can download to test if my harddrive is running good ?

The drive manufacturer should provide a diagnostic utility to test your hard drive.

Microsoft's article: Safe Removal of Plug and Play Devices

Quoted from here:
http://www.osronline.com/lists_archive/ntfsd/thread4421.html

Subject: Re: how to disable read/write cache - one more question
From: "Molly Brown" <xxx@windows.microsoft.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:16:39 -0800
What you really want the benefit of is FASTFAT's aggressive flushing
when it detects a volume or its media is hotplugable. Only FASTFAT
supports this -- NTFS is not intended for removable media.

When FASTFAT mounts the volume, it queries the device for the
IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_HOTPLUG_INFO ioctl. If the device sets either the
MediaHotPlug or DeviceHotPlug fields to TRUE, FAST will flush the file
on close so you don't have to wait for the cache manager's lazy writes
to flush the data to the disk. (I know this IOCTL is documented in the
Server 2003 DDK, but I'm guessing it was also documented in the XP DDK.)

IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_HOTPLUG_INFO was introduced in Windows XP, but the
basic functionality was backported to Windows 2000 for SP5. Instead of
responding to the IOCTL, you add a registry key under your service key
to specify that you want hotplug enabled. If you can't wait until
Windows 2000 SP5 is released, this change is available as a QFE today.
See KB article Q328504 for more details.

If you only need to support FAT, I believe this should work for you.

Molly Brown
Microsoft Corporation

I searched my registry for IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_HOTPLUG_INFO, MediaHotPlug, and DeviceHotPlug without any results. However, there is a hotplug.dll at the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\MUILanguages\RCV2\hotplug.dll
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Nls\MUILanguages\RCV2\hotplug.dll
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Control\Nls\MUILanguages\RCV2\hotplug.dll

IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_HOTPLUG_INFO

Result
After looking at this question and the Policies tab, it seems that two different concepts are confused. The "Optimize for quick removal" option is strictly for hot pluggable devices and does not provide the option for write caching to be enabled. To disable write caching, all that is needed is to uncheck the "Enable write caching on the disk" option.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: birdpup
After looking at this question and the Policies tab, it seems that two different concepts are confused. The "Optimize for quick removal" option is strictly for hot pluggable devices and does not provide the option for write caching to be enabled. To disable write caching, all that is needed is to uncheck the "Enable write caching on the disk" option.

Good set of data, Birdpup. But there are some bugs in that situation. First, a SATA drive IS hot-pluggable. This is what I ran into - a SATA drive in an external enclosure where the write caching option is grayed out. Why? Further analysis tells me that it is because my particular mobo has SATA and RAID linked. In order to use a SATA disk, it has to be "raided." Once RAID is in use, the SATA drive is no longer hot-pluggable according to XP.

Further, the only two options in Policies are Optimize for Quick Removal and Optimize for Performance. They are not check boxes - it is a choice of one or the other. In the case of my SATA drive, both are grayed out - i.e., not available. There is no "Enable Write Caching" checkbox. That is inherent in the performance option.