Default enabled Write-Cache?

[Melodist]

Hello there,

 

I've noticed that all my drives have write cache enabled? Why, if it is so unsafe, why would Windows have this activated by default? oO

[seagate_surfer]

There's a bit of a performance versus risk of corruption trade-off with write cache. When you disable the write cache feature, you take away the possibility of corruption for data that was being held in the cache at a time when an unexpected power down/outage or drive disconnection occurs, but having it disabled also tends to slow down the drive as well. As newer Operating Systems became more demanding, optimizing disk performance became a priority. 

The ideal scenario is just to ensure you don't have dodgy power and that you have a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) so that you can keep the feature enabled for performance reasons and the system will be able to shut down carefully before power runs out.

Check out our Knowledge Base article for more info:

Disabling the Write Cache feature in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7

[Mira Yurizaki]

13 hours ago, Melodist said:

I've noticed that all my drives have write cache enabled? Why, if it is so unsafe, why would Windows have this activated by default? oO

As a bit of a back up, the point of write caching is that the storage drive can report to the application that whatever operation it requested is done once all of the data arrives in the drive's cache rather than wait for the data to actually be written. Otherwise the application may stall while it waits for the storage drive to report back. The danger is that if you have power loss before the disk finally writes the data to the platters (or flash chips), that data is gone. And depending on how its implemented, it may be relatively long before that data is committed.

 

However, I feel like this technique has been around long enough and refined to a point that you basically have to have power loss within seconds of a write command going through to have data loss. But if you're really paranoid about data integrity, then leave it off.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I prefer turning it off. When a file copy progress bar is done, I want the copy to be ACTUALLY done, so I can pull a flash drive without having to eject it first.