Hello, I’m currently experiencing the same problem on all of my 6 WD40EFRX-68WT0N0.
My drives previously had write cache enabled in windows for roughly one year now, I know for sure! But just recently I realized very slow write performance (up to only 20-25 MB/s) and found the write cache being disabled on all of these disks. It is not possible to enable the write cache from windows device manager any more (same error message/behavior as mentioned above).
SMART info with HD Sentinel and CrystalDiskInfo shows:
-
Drive is HEALTHY, no SMART errors at all
-
Write-cache supported, but DISABLED
-
Write-Read-Verify DISABLED
A test with WD LifeGuard Diagnostics first of all only detects 5 of my 6 drives. But it did not reveal any problems (I’ve performed a QUICK test only. Not tested for bad sectors, as this takes too long and I do not assume that all 6 drives have gotten bad sectors at the same time while SMART does not show anything)
Now I first thought it might be a Windows problem, but it is not. Booted with current Ubuntu linux 14.04 and checked status wtih hdparm and smartctl. And the result is again:
-
Drive is HEALTHY, no SMART errors at all
-
Write-cache supported, but DISABLED
-
Write-Read-Verify DISABLED
Now the funny thing is if I use hdparm to try to enable the drive’s write cache I get the following:
/dev/sda: setting drive write-caching to 1 (on)
write-caching = 0 (off)
I’ve even already tried different controllers (onboard/extension):
-
Intel ICH7
-
Marvell 92xx
-
Marvell 94xx
-
Asmedia 106x
The problem is identical for all types! So I strongly assume it has nothing to do with the controller.
What is going on here? Any ideas? Is it necessary to contact WD support? Thanks in advance for any help.
Best, Pascal
