Should I enable write caching on my raid array?

The default is enabled but it gives a warning saying if the raid controller loses power the data will be lost.

What do most people have it set as, enabled or disabled?

I'm going to assume your not using a high-end battery backed up raid card here......



That being the case.... you should probably leave write-caching off. Unless you can live with the risk that someday you may be writing a long word document and then save it... but WHAM the power goes out... and now that document even though you saved it... is no longer there... because the save was stored in the cache which was lost during the power outage.

There is a noticeable performance benefit to it... but only during writes..... which if your the average desktop user does not happen often enough. Swapfile performance could be improved... but if your running a system with adequate memory I wouldn't bother... and furthermore if you what you are doing uses alot of swapfile... then you probably shouldn't be using write-cacheing anyway due to instabilities caused by excessive page file access.