write caching/ read caching - yes or no

fanger · 1 Aug 2006 at 16:59

In device manager I have these options:

Enable write caching
Enable read caching
Let BIOS determine transfer speeds

For max performance what should one enable or disable?
I've never really understood what should be what

Many thanks for the fruitful products of your brain matter.

fanger

sirlemonhead · 1 Aug 2006 at 21:34

Write caching will try to build up a temporary store of data to a certain capacity before it'll write the whole lot to the hard drive in one go. Meant to be a lot faster than just constantly writing small bits of data to the drive.

I believe if you lose power to the pc before the data is written, it wont get written to the drive so you'll lose it.

I have it turned off myself.

james.miller · 1 Aug 2006 at 21:39

*looks in device manager* and mine is.........enabled. meh. dont think its ever caused me any problems.

fanger · 1 Aug 2006 at 23:58

sirlemonhead said:
Write caching will try to build up a temporary store of data to a certain capacity before it'll write the whole lot to the hard drive in one go. Meant to be a lot faster than just constantly writing small bits of data to the drive.

I believe if you lose power to the pc before the data is written, it wont get written to the drive so you'll lose it.

I have it turned off myself.

Thank you sirlemonhead,

write caching X = (disabled...)

Now,

how about read caching

and

Let BIOS determine transfer speeds...

TheVoice · 2 Aug 2006 at 02:01

I'd enable all three myself, for best performance (assuming your BIOS is set-up correctly).