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I have a Storage Spaces pool on a server that is not currently power protected. It consists only of mechanical hard drives.

I want to compare performance of write caching enabled vs disabled so I can make a decision about how much of a priority power protection should be.

Is it sufficient to disable write caching through Device Manager -> Policies for each physical hard drive, or do I need to disable it anywhere else through Storage Spaces?

For example, it is enabled on the Microsoft Storage Space Device entry in Device Manager, and cannot be disabled. I'm not sure if that is important at all.

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Cyanara
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When it comes to the Storage Spaces cache, I read the topic and according to the results, the difference is so small so can be neglected. A little about Disk write cache on Windows VM | StarWind Blog

Also, here is the topic describing how Storage Spaces cache can be changed on a fly. Using Windows Server 2012's SSD Write-Back Cache | Redmondmag.com

Hope it helps.

Stuka
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    That first link is encouraging. I do seem to lose a small amount of speed by turning off write-caching, but it was so little that I didn't know if it was within the margin of error. Unfortunately that second link seems to state quite specifically that cache absolutely can't be changed on the fly. It has to be done when the virtual disk is created. However, that's mostly where tiers are involved. In my case itt at least looks like I should be able to see if the built-in HDD cache is registering. – Cyanara Dec 27 '17 at 01:20