How To Enable Write Caching On An External Hard Drive (2020)

June 16, 2020
Posted by: Craig Chamberlin
Category: Microsoft Windows

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**STEP 1: Click On The Start Menu Button.**

**STEP 2: Type This PC Into The Search Box.**

**STEP 3: Select This PC From The Search Results.**

**STEP 4: Insert The USB Stick Or External Drive Into The USB Port Of The Computer Or Device.**

**STEP 5: Ensure The USB Stick Or Drive Installs Correctly By Opening It.**

**STEP 6: Click On The Start Menu Button Again And Type Device Manager Into The Search Box.**

**STEP 9: Right Click On The USB Or External Hard Drive And Choose Properties.**

**STEP 11: Ensure The Box Better Performance Is Checked.**

**STEP 13: To Safely Remove The USB Hardware, Right Click On The USB Icon In The System Tray And Choose Eject.**

**STEP 14: Wait For The Windows Notification To State It Is Safe To Remove The Hardware.**

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Lesson Summary:

This lesson can be found within my book 27 Amazing Windows 10 Performance Boosting Tips: A Complete Visual Guide For Beginners, Intermediates & Experts. The goal of this lesson is to teach the user How To Enable Write Caching On An External Hard Drive in 2020, This lesson is performed using a complete visual guide. First, we will assess the primary skill one user will obtain through the lesson. Second, a brief risk analysis of how the lesson can impact system performance and security. Finally, we conclude with learning why this particular lesson is important.

Skills Obtained In This Lesson:

Skills Obtained In How To Enable Write Caching On An External Hard Drive (2020)

Risk Analysis Of This Lesson:

Risk Analysis Of How To Enable Write Caching On An External Hard Drive (2020)

Why Learning How To Enable Write Caching On An External Hard Drive (2020) Is Important:

WARNING! To Prevent Possible Data Loss, Use The Safely Remove Hardware Feature Of Microsoft Windows 10 When Removing A Write Cache Enabled USB Or External Hard Drive.

Does This Lesson Require An External USB Or Hard Drive?

There are many tweaks for optimizing Windows 10 performance, but not all of them can be considered a niche. This trick is very niche because it requires a USB stick or external hard drive. Now I know what you’re thinking, where am I going to find these kinds of devices? I’m kidding, we probably all have about 15 of them in our drawer. Windows has a feature called write caching.

This feature of write caching allows a USB stick to hold information before writing it to the hard drive temporarily. Now I know this sounds technical, but it’s not that complicated. Direct hard drive read and write times can cause delays. Allowing a rapid read and write device such as a USB 3.0 stick allows Windows to leverage its storage as a launching platform for writing to the hard drive.

Will I Get Much Benefit From This If I Have A Solid State Drive?

Now, if you have a solid-state hard drive, you’re not going to see much benefit from this. If you’re not sure if you have a solid-state hard drive, Windows gives an effortless way for you to determine the hard drive media type. Built into the Windows defragmentation tool is a media type detector. To launch it, click on the start menu button and type in defragment. Choose defragment and optimize drives from the search results.

Once defragment and optimize drives opens, there is a section called media-type. This section specifies hard disk drive if you have a standard rotary drive. Standard rotary drives are much slower than solid-state drives. If you have a solid-state drive, the media-type shows a solid-state drive. As I said before, do not bother using write caching if you have a solid-state drive.

One More Thing You Should Know

Do not remove the USB stick without right-clicking on the drive in your computer and clicking safely remove hardware. Since this USB stick temporarily holds your information, you do not want to remove it if it is in the middle of writing. Doing so could result in data loss. Depending on the machine, you may see decent improvements from this tip. More importantly, since its niche, you have bragging rights for a skill that uses old USB sticks.