Unable to Enable Write Caching

[Phil1ip]

Okay, so yesterday I found out that my hard drive wasn't set to SATA AHCI but set to IDE. So to solve this problem I had to reinstall my whole OS and load the SATA drivers from there. The drivers were for Intel ICH9R SATA controllers called Intel Matrix storage manager 32.

So after I reinstalled the OS I go to my device manager and look at the drive properties to see if the advanced performance options were enabled, as they were when the drive was set to IDE. I found that under the enable write caching tab it says: this device does not allow its write caching settings to be modified. Also, this means I can't enable to advanced performance options either. Any suggestions on how to enable it? Also if nobody knows how to enable it would setting it back to IDE mode then enable it give better performance over SATA 2 with it not enabled?


Here are my specs:

CPU:E6850
MOBO:Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
RAM:2x1GB crucial ballistix PC2-6400
GFX:8800 GTX
HDD:160GB Western Digital Caviar @7200RPM SATA 2
OS:VISTA Home Premium 32-bit

[Xeth]

AFAIK AHCI just gives you NCQ which doesn't really help with single-user performance, so switching to "legacy mode" should not affect your performance negatively.

OTOH it could be that write caching is enabled by default in AHCI mode...

[enyceexdanny]

Did you try to enable it via Intel Matrix storage manager by right clicking the drive and selecting "enable write-back cache"

[Phil1ip]

Yes I tried going into the Intel Matrix Storage Console, and right clicking on the hard drive just brings up "no action available."