XP - Enable write caching on disk and improve disk performance

[ben2ong2]

I have enabled write caching on my disk and this does have helped improve disk performance to a significant degree. Now you may ask why ?. WriteCache is nothing else but implementation of concept of delayed write. As we all know I/O activities are generally slow and hence if they are synchronous can significantly reduce the system performance. Hence if system performance has to be improved we have to reduce I/O activities. Now practically we can not ask you to change your habits (meaning start typing like a superman or robot etc.) but we can have a solution. We can control the frequency of diskwrite by specifying regular intervals. All that needs to be written between the intervals would be writen in a write buffer which would be maintained in RAM. This write buffer would be written to the disk at regular intervals or whenever it gets full. This is a smart concept with one drawback. There is a chance that you may loose some data in case of critical power loss or system failure but this is not an issue for me and should not be to most of the users. Such things become an issue for Mission Critical Business Servers. To enable write cache on your disk, go to DEVICE MANAGER. Then select hard disk in the disk drives and right click on it and select properties. Go to policies tab and select checkbox which say "Enable write caching on the disk". Close out everything and you are done.