Write-caching disabled when using AHCI with XP?

[ColKurtz]

I'd like to enable hot-swap on an external SATA drive as part of a home media server backup plan. My mobo (Intel DG965WH/ICH8) doesn't have any eSATA ports, but I do have several SATA ports free. I understand I can enable AHCI and get hot-swap on my SATA ports, but I installed XP32 in IDE Mode... so I have to reinstall XP or enable AHCI via other (hack-ish) methods.

I've run across several articles that say that Write-caching is disabled when using AHCI under XP. Apparently Microsoft did not write AHCI drivers for XP, but when using the Intel AHCI drivers, the write-cache option is greyed-out in device manager.

My question is whether anyone knows whether write-caching is indeed disabled, or whether the Intel drivers are doing their own thing as far as caching goes (as I've seen implied) and the device manager cache button being greyed out doesn't mean much?

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.

 

[ttime]

Altough I am not 100% sure about this, I think that Intel solved this problem in it's latest drivers. So if you download latest version of "the Intel Matrix Storage Manager" from the intel website, it should enable you to use disk caching. (It works for me anyway...)