Force Write Caching off on esata removable?

[Gutspiller]

Hello,

I am trying to force write caching OFF on a removable hard drive (in Windows 7), so that I am able to disconnect it without data corruption. I have gone into device manager, and the properties of the drive, and the checkbox for write caching is checked. When I try to uncheck it and click OK, I get a message that reads:

"Windows could not change the write-caching setting for the device. Your device might not support this feature or changing the setting."

The drive is a Seagate ST9500420AS 2.5 inch drive, and is connected through a misc. esata external bay to a RocketRAID 231x Sata controller.

I need this drive to be hotswappable without the fear of losing data, which I've already been informed by Windows twice to run forms of checkdisk, both of which I did perform.

I do not want nor am I willing to put up with having to turn off my machine every time I want to disconnect this drive.

The RocketRAID is designed to support hotswap as it will detect the drive as soon as it's plugged in, and allow it to disappear moments after being disconnected.

I've also tried 3rd party utilities for safely disconnecting such drives with no luck. They all say it's in use, even after turning off Windows Indexing services for the drive.

I've searched Google, and can find nothing on how to force this drive to turn off this caching, which I believe is interfering with it safely being hotswappable.

Does anybody have any suggestions, short of purchasing a new drive?

Thanks for any help.

[alsenior]

look for the option on the raid card's bios as windows has no control over this device. other than that try plugging it into a motherboard sata connector

[arthurleung]

May be try if you can use some sort of batch file to put the drive offline (equivalent to unmount in linux) using diskpart? Then wait for say 30 seconds and pull the drive out.

Windows doesn't work well with RAID cards but the highpoint card you're using is pretty low end so unlikely there is any cache on the card.