Unable to Disable Write Caching?

[Harkhof]

I recently put a VanTec EZ Swap drive rack in one of my systems. VanTec
claims that this drive bay is "hot-swappable", but when I turn off or remove
the drive, explorer still "sees" it, and will even try to copy a file that I
drop on the "ghost" drive letter, locking windows up in the process.

This morning, when I brought the system out of hibernation (and having
removed the drive before hibernation), a ballon message appeared over the
systray that windows was not able to write $MFT to "Y:OFF_LINE" and
mentioned something about write caching. I was unable to write down the
message at the time, so I'm paraphrasing.

Anyway, I checked the drive properties in Device Manager and found that the
"enable write caching" option under the Policies tab was missing, and that
the information regarding write caching (under headings "Optimize for quick
removal" & Optimize for performance") was there, but greyed out.

The drive in question is on a mainboard supplied ITE IT8212 ATA RAID
controller on a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard that can be designated as ATA
IDE or RAID.. The controller is listed in DM under "SCSI & RAID
Controllers". Given that all drives on that controller are treated in the
same manner (i.e., write caching option unavailable), as well as drives on
add-in controllers on other machines, this seems to be the standard for
these additional controllers.

The question is, how can I disable write caching on this drive (and
therefore designate as removable) so as to avoid the type of issues
described in the first two paragraphs?

Thanks,
Hark

 

[Eric Gisin]

I recently put a VanTec EZ Swap drive rack in one of my systems. VanTec
claims that this drive bay is "hot-swappable", but when I turn off or remove
the drive, explorer still "sees" it, and will even try to copy a file that I
drop on the "ghost" drive letter, locking windows up in the process.

Hot swap IDE cannot be done with hardware alone, it also need software support.
Most drivers do not, so you have to disable the drive in Device Mangler.

This morning, when I brought the system out of hibernation (and having
removed the drive before hibernation), a ballon message appeared over the
systray that windows was not able to write $MFT to "Y:OFF_LINE" and
mentioned something about write caching. I was unable to write down the
message at the time, so I'm paraphrasing.

Anyway, I checked the drive properties in Device Manager and found that the
"enable write caching" option under the Policies tab was missing, and that
the information regarding write caching (under headings "Optimize for quick
removal" & Optimize for performance") was there, but greyed out.

The drive in question is on a mainboard supplied ITE IT8212 ATA RAID
controller on a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard that can be designated as ATA
IDE or RAID.. The controller is listed in DM under "SCSI & RAID
Controllers". Given that all drives on that controller are treated in the
same manner (i.e., write caching option unavailable), as well as drives on
add-in controllers on other machines, this seems to be the standard for
these additional controllers.

Broken drivers.

The question is, how can I disable write caching on this drive (and
therefore designate as removable) so as to avoid the type of issues
described in the first two paragraphs?

Find out who makes the chip for the IDE RAID (promise/highpoint/SiI) and check
their support page. If you disable the RAID feature, you might be able to use
the Microsoft IDE driver.

 

[Harkhof]

Hot swap IDE cannot be done with hardware alone, it also need software
support.
Most drivers do not, so you have to disable the drive in Device Mangler.

Thanks for the Response, Eric. Disabling it does seem to be the only option
(& one I hadn't considered...), and I think I can live with that.

Thanks again,
Hark

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I recently put a VanTec EZ Swap drive rack in one of my systems.
VanTec claims that this drive bay is "hot-swappable", but when I turn off
or remove the drive, explorer still "sees" it, and will even try to copy a file
that I drop on the "ghost" drive letter, locking windows up in the process.

This morning, when I brought the system out of hibernation (and having
removed the drive before hibernation), a ballon message appeared over the
systray that windows was not able to write $MFT to "Y:OFF_LINE" and
mentioned something about write caching. I was unable to write down the
message at the time, so I'm paraphrasing.

Anyway, I checked the drive properties in Device Manager and found that
the "enable write caching" option under the Policies tab was missing, and
that the information regarding write caching (under headings "Optimize for
quick removal" & Optimize for performance") was there, but greyed out.

The drive in question is on a mainboard supplied ITE IT8212 ATA RAID
controller on a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard that can be designated as
ATA IDE or RAID.. The controller is listed in DM under "SCSI & RAID
Controllers". Given that all drives on that controller are treated in the
same manner (i.e., write caching option unavailable), as well as drives on
add-in controllers on other machines, this seems to be the standard for
these additional controllers.

The question is, how can I disable write caching on this drive

(and therefore designate as removable)

Are you saying that this unavailabe option is also setting
the removable tickbox (option, whatever) as unavailable?

 

[Harkhof]

Are you saying that this unavailabe option is also setting
the removable tickbox (option, whatever) as unavailable?

Yes, it is an unavailable option (greyed out).

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

You should fix your quote-fix.

Yes, it is an unavailable option (greyed out).

What makes you think that write-caching is causing that?