Vista - Can't disable write cache for USB drive

Hi. I just had this problem going on right now.

I have a USB drive connected on my laptop and I've been having problems with
it. Before, everything was fine, but lately I've always had difficulty
removing it with the safely remove option. Before, I didn't but now I always
do. Not only that I've been getting so many corrupted folders as of late.
Because of this I had to format my drive.

I later found out my write cache is enabled even though it's supposed to be
naturally disabled. To this day I don't understand how that happened
considering that before I would yank the USB cable and not have any problems.
So I try to disable it, but when I go to my devices menu, it says write cache
is not enabled (aka optimized for removal). But when I check my USB drive
properties, it says my drive has write cache enabled (aka optimized for
performance). It's greyed out and I can't change a thing.

However, I tried turning off the User-Account Control and my drive
properties suddenly say the write cache is disabled and I can choose
whichever option. I don't like to always disable my UAC, because windows
doesn't recommend it, but how do I disable my write cache with the UAC on? I
don't want to keep losing my data because no matter how long I leave my
computer on, it would never let me remove my drive. Nor do i know what
program to close to make it work.

All my measurement show that these policies have absolutely
no effect in most cases. Only on FAT formatted USB harddrives
there is the expeted effect (write cache on or off).

When the 'Safley remove hardware' fails this it has nothing
to do with write caching. If there is data not written so
far in the cache then it is written to the disk before the
next step is done.

I've put together some hints for this situation:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html#safe_removal


Greetings from Germany

Uwe


Lina wrote: