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Does Windows flush the drive caches when entering standby mode?

It seems like an obvious thing to do and I for one would design it like that if I were on the Windows team, but over the years, I have learned not to make such assumptions.

I only managed to find a single page that asked this (in regards to XP), but no answer was given, just a generic response.

Is there any sort of definitive information that Windows flushes disk caches on standby?

Synetech
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2 Answers2

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The answer is yes according to this MS Support article + some "Sherlock Holmes deductions":

The FLUSH CACHE command is not issued and the hard disk may become corrupted when you enter standby or hibernate

MSKB 331060

This article apply to Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 and MS issued an HotFix to correct the problem therefore we can assume (!? ;) ) that a Flush Cache Command is issued each time Windows XP (an later?) enter in standby mode. I found no other article issued by MS to clarify this point but this is the well known obscure MS communication style...

climenole
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It depends on the hardware settings for the drive.

A drive that Windows recognizes as a removable drive by default has the write cache turned off, which generally makes it safe to remove without "ejecting" the drive.

http://lifehacker.com/5863810/do-i-really-need-to-eject-usb-drives-before-removing-them

Hope that helps.

Jason Kirby
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