Windows 10: Hard drives write cache is always enabled at startup.

I want to disable my hard drives write cache to protect my machine in the event of a power
failure, ie me having to to a hard reboot when it has frozen up.

However I notice it keeps being re-enable at start-up.

Any idea on how to fix it?

The drive is actually one I took out of a USB drive (western digital) wonder if that is relevant?

Or it it the same for any drive?

Also I wonder a bit about the wisdom of doing so anyway I think it might reduce the life span of the
drive, it sound different with it disabled, maybe you would expect that though??

I have not had to do a hard reset for a long time now, over three weeks!! (Gosh it is bad when
3 weeks in a long time between critical events!!), although it is 5 weeks since I had to reinstall windows!!

I guess I had some critical events ie kernal power loss after 5 weeks ago with did not require a reinstall.
I think I improved thing but not allowing the hard drive to be turned off for a very long time ie over a
day which mean it is never turned off except at when I shut it down myself at the end of the day.

:)

 

Bitlocker To Go with XTS-AES 128 destroyed my 8TB Hard Drive (Windows 10 1511/10586/November Update)

I've also had this issue, with a 4TB drive. Rebooted during encryption, now I've got the corruption issue. I wonder if it's something to do with the Removal Policy? ie, the person who had no trouble with the drive put into an enclosure might have had Write
Caching enabled, whereas most external drives will attach as 'Quick Removal' (no write caching). I've had no issue with XTS-AES on my internal drives which
do have Write Caching enabled.

Its a real shame @Sayan_Ghosh disappeared without a trace...

 

Windows performance is extremely slow, disk usage shoots to 100% most of the time

Well creating a project does write a great many files to the drive, and unless you have an SSD drive it can definitely max out the hard drive's write cache. It sounds to me like your hard drive is probably a slow magnetic drive with limited amount of cache
available. I'd bet that's the most significant choke point right now.

@ Greg what are your thoughts considering this behavior?

 

You really don't want that feature disabled. And yes, Windows enables it for better drive performance. If you're that worried about loss of power you should get a UPS - Uninterruptable Power Supply.

And though I'm in the U.S. I've not known the UK to suffer from power outages so I'm not sure what your worry is here. And Yes, I've been to the UK in my military days on visits and don't remember power outages then *Wink

As for lifespan, I've been running drives for years, some longer than 5 years, with that feature enabled and never had a problem. That's not a feature that's going to burn out a drive.

And out side of power outages, if your having power issues, you might look at your power supply and/or cable connections.

 

Leave it enabled, I've had lots of BSODs with external drives connected, no data was corrupted as long as it was already written to disk. Obviously, if you're copying/moving and a crash occurs, that data will most likely be corrupt. I believe this option is enabled by default for all internal drives.

 

WEll my worry is when my machine locks up and there is a power outage due to me pulling the plug out, I guess I could leave it locked up forever but that is a waste of a PC adn power.

I am talking about running with it disable, you have it enable so that is far fewer writes, may 1000 times less writes.

My PC has been freezing about once month so it is a concern.

I may have cured that by never allowing the drive to be turned off. I though I had dones at but it seems it only follows your instructions if you do it in in advanced setting, if you do it in normal it seeem to not apply the changes.

 

well i have had to re install windows several times and id rather not have to.