Disable write caching on sata hdd?

[zibbledabbit]

After new system build and install of XP Home, Windows has placed a "Safely remove hardware" icon in my task bar that refers to my Hitachi 250Gb SATA HDD (no RAID). The HDD policies for this drive show "Optimize for performance" ticked, so write caching is enabled. This setting can be changed to "optimize for quick removal" instead, which disables caching, and gets rid of the safely remove hardware icon.

So what are the pros/cons of the write caching options (should I leave on/off?) in a system with AMD 64 3200, 1-Gb ram, GeForce 6600 GT?

Thanks,
Dennis

 

[biostud]

leave on for maximum speed

 

[zibbledabbit]

Thanks for the quick reply....

 

[Jeff7]

I think that "Optimize for quick removal" is for hot-swap devices like USB/Firewire drives. If I remember this right, if there's something in the write cache, but the drive loses power before it can put that data onto the drive's platters, you can get severe data corruption. Disabling the write cache eliminates this problem, but it can also limit the speed of the drive.
Check your BIOS sometime for an option about external/L2 cache. Disable that and try to boot. Be prepared for a very long wait. That's what happens without certain caches available.