Windows 10: Change "removal policy" defaults for current and all future drives?

This is basically a repost from Reddit a month ago, with no replies. Here it goes:

It's maddening.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...external-media

Every drive I plug gets defaulted to quick removal which makes them read/write at no more than 40 MB/s. For each drive I have to go change that policy (one by one) and restart the whole system. Sometimes when changing the policy it asks for a restart, sometimes not, but while the setting "sticks" it has no effect until the restart. Got a new drive to work with? Hard luck, go change it manually, close everything and restart.

And it gets worse. While the policy is "remembered", sometimes it resets itself for a drive upon connecting it (for no reason it seems). You didn't realise and started copying 200GB of data? Enjoy your 40 MB/s.

Is there a group policy or registry to make the default for all drives current and future "better performance" and "enable write caching"? I can't find anything. Only useless articles showing how to change the setting normally. On top of everything quick removal is useless for journaled filesystems like NTFS, why did they change it in the first place?

-------

I've just went back to the issue and spent a while trying to get around it. Afaik there's seems to be no cmd nor powershell command (so it could be run in a script), nor registry nor group policy for this setting. I've run out of places where to look.

What's funny is that that quick removal policy not only makes any drive slow to the point of being unusable, if you're copying any amount of small files the drive simply stops responding and the whole system freezes. You know, that old shit Windows behaviour that when a drive stops responding the whole system freezes until the drive responds again or you pull the plug on it.

:)

 

Change "removal policy" defaults for current and all future drives?

This is basically a repost from Reddit a month ago, with no replies. Here it goes:

It's maddening.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...external-media

Every drive I plug gets defaulted to quick removal which makes them read/write at no more than 40 MB/s. For each drive I have to go change that policy (one by one) and restart the whole system. Sometimes when changing the policy it asks for a restart, sometimes not, but while the setting "sticks" it has no effect until the restart. Got a new drive to work with? Hard luck, go change it manually, close everything and restart.

And it gets worse. While the policy is "remembered", sometimes it resets itself for a drive upon connecting it (for no reason it seems). You didn't realise and started copying 200GB of data? Enjoy your 40 MB/s.

Is there a group policy or registry to make the default for all drives current and future "better performance" and "enable write caching"? I can't find anything. Only useless articles showing how to change the setting normally. On top of everything quick removal is useless for journaled filesystems like NTFS, why did they change it in the first place?

-------

I've just went back to the issue and spent a while trying to get around it. Afaik there's seems to be no cmd nor powershell command (so it could be run in a script), nor registry nor group policy for this setting. I've run out of places where to look.

What's funny is that that quick removal policy not only makes any drive slow to the point of being unusable, if you're copying any amount of small files the drive simply stops responding and the whole system freezes. You know, that old shit Windows behaviour that when a drive stops responding the whole system freezes until the drive responds again or you pull the plug on it.

 

Change "removal policy" defaults for current and all future drives?

Please try the experiment I suggested... including restart.

There are some refs to odd registry keys in comments on this topic.
Scripting to apply the policy like this might be possible, but elsewhere I saw a comment it needed a restart to apply the change to the registry...

Also note that when using a USB disk for Macrium Imaging, despite the policy being Quick removal, the write speed does not seem to be compromised.

 

Change "removal policy" defaults for current and all future drives?

My guess would be that MS wants to make it an individual per drive choice to enable write caching so the user is aware they have done that and need to take precautions when removing the device.

A group policy or Settings option to permanently enable write caching would counter their attempt to prevent loss of data.

Will be interesting to see what others say.

Just tried an experiment: a flash drive, default quick removal.
In Disk Management I assigned a drive letter, X

I then changed the 'policy' to better performance.

Repeatedly safely removing and plugging in the device - now assigned X - the policy was unchanged.
Not tried restarting.

You might like to experiment.