Windows 10: Fast Boot has the devil inside

Thanks for all the answer, following your suggestions i did further investigation
and this is what i found; i did understand the issue (i consider it a nasty BUG) much better:

Problem:
PC_B remembers the files that were present not the ones actually present
when you plug in the drive; it happens very often, not allways.

0 Using a different USB drive (spinning HD) and cable, to avoid HD specific issues
1 we're talking about Windows Fast startup/boot not BIOS
2 it does NOT happen without fast startup (fast startup disabled) so no problems with my PCs
3 The HD must be already known by both PC_A and PC_B
4 it happens also if i remove the drive with SAFE REMOVE from PC_A
5 The files are actually copied in the USB drive, the problem is with the second PC (PC_B) not with the USB HD
6 if i reboot PC_B, the actual files are correctly displayed in the usb HD not the old ones.
7 i'm using the same drive letter in both PC (don't know if related also)

I would also stress that i'd be hunted by this problem for years (since windows 8) and it's quite incredible that it's not yet fixed.

My conclusion is that Fast startup cannot be trusted and used.

The devil wears Prada fast boots.

 

I'm wearing Prada flip-flops right now (probably fake but whatever). What does that tell you? The Devil is telling you not to type in the words powercfg -h off.

 

That you're a lazy slaker *Smile

I do not understand what it has to do with the problem i described (did you read all of it slaker?),
anyway being lazy myself i prefer "alt f4 enter" to turnoff ... but again the files are copied in the HD
it's the 2nd PC the problem.

If i misunderstood you, what powercfg -h off (i ctrl c it btw) is supposed to do?

 

I'm not a slacker. It is the weekend. And anyway I'm retired (currently) and live somewhere hot. Ok I'm a slacker - you got me.

Powercfg -h off removes the hiberfil.sys file so neither hibernation or fast startup can work. That means that mounting a Windows volume on another PC (Windows or not) will not corrupt it. Unless you use hibernation it is the best thing to do as when you shut down the files in the buffer are written to disk.

If you don't then some things can be stored in the buffer (which is saved to your C drive in hiberfil.sys and then restored). If some change is made by an external system (Windows or not) you can either corrupt or lose items that have not been forced to disk (by whatever algorithm Windows uses).

There is a tutorial about turning it on/off here Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

 

Ok thanks, i can see it can be very usefull for dual boot systems, in my case it's more simple to just disable
fast startup.

Go Slakers !

 

External drives and fast startup and shutdown don't always play well together. And problems are more likely to occur when the external drive is using NTFS, a file system never designed for external drives. Not surprising as when it was developed external drives were quite unusual.

You won't find this in any official documentation but it is known to Microsoft that hard drives aren't always completely honest with the OS about their internal state. They may report that data has been written to the disk when in fact that has not yet been done. This can cause some problems. And the OS has no independent way to verify this but must rely on what the drive reports. When there are unknowns involved it is always best to play it safe, even when officially it should not be necessary. That means using the safe removal procedure before removing the drive. This tells the drive that it's removal is imminent and must actually write the data as requested.

 

The BIOS fast boot can create some oddities. I have one PC where the Gigabyte ultra fast boot option doesn't recognise the keyboard when using the safe menu boot options but works using the standard fast boot option.