Write-Back Cache Raid - 0

[NGL_BrSH]

I recently started reading posts about write-back caching and some of the pro's and con's. When you enable it, there is this scary error message that says the world will explode if i lose power.

I have tried it both ways (enabled/disabled) and enabled on benchmarks certainly is substantially faster.

I use my raid 0 (dual gen 2 74 gig raptors in raid 0) solely for my OS and the two games I play. never is there anything important stored on this drive and if it failed.. so be it.

The flip side is that I also don't want to reformat frequently due to OS corruption because I'm amazingly lazy.

I'm on an UPS currently but it doesn't shut down the computer automatically.. i still have to be home.

So my question here is, how frequently does the OS write important information that if lost would be unrecoverable and corrupt my win7 x64 install?

I overclock my i7 930 to 4.2 right now and am pushing it further day by day.. but occasionally I get a BSOD or a freeze-up when I'm pushing it with trail and error.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Write-Back Cache Raid - 0

I always have this on with RAID 0 and no UPS, never had any issues in years so you will be fine I think.

I do the same you mentioned there at the end of your thoughts as well, no issues with my arrays due to this. I have had issues with RAID 1 storage arrays and pushing causing BSOD's and then needing to rebuild, but that happens with this setting enabled or not.

[NGL_BrSH]

Re: Write-Back Cache Raid - 0

you've had the write-back feature enabled in the intel matrix manager for years? If thats the case I feel pretty safe.. it's a pretty big difference performance wise with raid-0 no wbc and raid - 0 wbc.

Thanks for your reply as always lsd.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Write-Back Cache Raid - 0

Yes, always have and never have problems even when BSOD. You are right, huge difference and that sucks without it enabled!

Anytime, I'm here to help!

[mv2devnull]

Re: Write-Back Cache Raid - 0

You are about to save a file. Changes are already in the cache. Power goes out. Changes were not written, or not written completely.

So what gets corrupted? The bits that were about to be changed. What is usually written to disk in the background? Logs, browser cache, and pagefile. Will that corrupt rest of the filesystem? Not likely. Will it confuse the OS after reboot? I don't think so.

What could be more fatal, is interruption of the periodic auto-defragmenting of Vista and W7. That can touch more valuable files.