Intel Matrix Storage Hard Drive Data Cache always off after restart

[mxnerd]

Anyone has same experience?

I'm using a 3-Disk RAID-5 using Intel Matrix Storage on a SBS 2003 Server.

If found that whenever I rebooted the machine, the Hard Drive Data Cache wss always turned off by the Intel Matrix Storage Manager/driver. If I turned it on and reboot again, it was reset to off again.

Anyone has same experience? This is really annoying since the performance with cache turned on and off has huge difference. Anyway to fix it? Thanks!!!

 

[Rubycon]

This is behavior by design. It's documented in several KB's. Any drive where the AD, SQL, etc. database(s) reside shall have its write cache set to disabled to avoid corruption in the event of an unscheduled shutdown. This can be overridden IF the hardware vendor's driver/firmware/etc. supports it. Usually in the case of a hardware RAID host the cache is controlled by the firmware and a battery is usually present to retain uncommitted buffers which will save the day when someone accidentally trips over the power cords.

I believe there's a way to cheat and that is convert your disks to dynamic. Then you can change the write cache to enabled on the drive(s) in the device manager and it should stay that way. I have not tried this myself and don't recommend it unless you know exactly what this does but I thought I would bring it up.

 

[Madwand1]

Which setting are you referring to? AFAIK, the setting at the Device Manager / Drive level has no effect when you're using Intel RAID, which is what you're observing when you see it flipping back. For Intel RAID, you enable the write cache through the Intel Matrix Storage Console.