Is "Turn Off Windows write-cache buffer flushing" safe on a laptop?

Question

my laptop's internal harddrive is a bit slow. I looked at the drive properties and there are two options:

[X] Enable write caching on the device
[ ] Turn off windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device

As you can see, the first option is checked already, but the second option isn't. I've heard the second option can really speed things up, but it also sounds very risky. Is it safe to do on a laptop that rarely is off of AC power? (but still has battery as well)

Answer 1

Yes it is safe. Windows never uses up all of the battery power. When the battery level reaches a certain minimum (~6-7%), it automatically flushes drive caches and hibernates. It does this before the battery level is too low to hibernate which requires a certain amount of “juice” to spin the hard-drive long enough to copy the RAM to disk.

Answer 2

Power loss is not the only thing that causes a system to physically fail. On laptops, it's easy to spill drinks in keyboards, drop them down stairs, and various other dangers while the disk is spinning. Anything that disables the hard drive suddenly is going to be a little safer with write caching enabled. I suggest leaving it enabled.

Answer 3

Emprically, I have had to reinstall windows 3 times on 2 separate laptops using this setting. Never had to do this when it is not set. Had the laptops 4 years and 1 years, probably ran than about 50% with setting 50% without. Currently without. Not enough data to prove anything QED but enough to convince me that the grief involved in proving the above was coincidence is not worth the benefit of the performance boost, I definitely would not use it on a system drive.