Change "removal policy" defaults for current and all future drives?

This is basically a repost from Reddit a month ago, with no replies. Here it goes:

It's maddening.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...external-media

Every drive I plug gets defaulted to quick removal which makes them read/write at no more than 40 MB/s. For each drive I have to go change that policy (one by one) and restart the whole system. Sometimes when changing the policy it asks for a restart, sometimes not, but while the setting "sticks" it has no effect until the restart. Got a new drive to work with? Hard luck, go change it manually, close everything and restart.

And it gets worse. While the policy is "remembered", sometimes it resets itself for a drive upon connecting it (for no reason it seems). You didn't realise and started copying 200GB of data? Enjoy your 40 MB/s.

Is there a group policy or registry to make the default for all drives current and future "better performance" and "enable write caching"? I can't find anything. Only useless articles showing how to change the setting normally. On top of everything quick removal is useless for journaled filesystems like NTFS, why did they change it in the first place?

-------

I've just went back to the issue and spent a while trying to get around it. Afaik there's seems to be no cmd nor powershell command (so it could be run in a script), nor registry nor group policy for this setting. I've run out of places where to look.

What's funny is that that quick removal policy not only makes any drive slow to the point of being unusable, if you're copying any amount of small files the drive simply stops responding and the whole system freezes. You know, that old shit Windows behaviour that when a drive stops responding the whole system freezes until the drive responds again or you pull the plug on it.

Indeed. Seems to be yet another dick move by MS. The thing is "safe removal" is useless with NTFS (anyone formats HDDs with FAT?). There's no point in stomping a drive's performance to the ground just for that.

And maybe not a setting, but a group policy (at least a registry) makes sense to change this. Your regular user doesn't bother with those, anyone getting out of their way to change it will know how to remove a device.

I've just found this:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...um=winserverGP

It talks of a registry location at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\IDE\DISKNAME\DISKGUI\Device Parameters\Disk"

"IDE" doesn't exist in W10, drives are contained in "SCSI". "DISKGUI" and the values mentioned there aren't found anywhere though. I searched every entry under the name of a drive with write caching already enabled, I couldn't find anything that might hint to that setting.

I haven't done this for quite a while, so I'm not 100% sure of this. I think that if you close the file explorer then Windows doesn't need to restart. I always do it by right clicking the drive in file explorer - properties - hardware tab - double click drive - change settings button to bring the policy tab - toggle to Write Caching. If you click OK at this point then Windows wants to restart. If you close the explorer window that you originally right clicked the drive in then click OK then Windows does not need to restart. I don't know if the policy change takes affect until you restart, but Windows doesn't demand to be restarted.

I have a whole bunch of USB drives and I am getting ready to re-install Windows on 5 PCs. I am looking for a registry key to export that will hold the write cache policy so I don't have to set them all again on 5 PCs

The Reg Keys that contain your setting for Removal policy are here:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI\(Your Drive Here)\(Instance of this particular drive model)\Device Parameters\Classpnp\ - UserRemovalPolicy

A value of 3 is "Quick Removal", 2 is "Better Performance"; I'm not sure what a zero or 1 would do

The Reg Keys that contain your settings for Write Caching are here:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI\(Your Drive Here)\(Instance of this particular drive model)\Device Parameters\Disk\ - UserWriteCacheSetting

1 = "Enable Write Caching on the Device", 0 = Unchecked

Under the same key: CacheIsPowerProtected - 1 = "Turn off Write-Cache buffer flushing on the device", 0 = Unchecked

You could plug in each of the drives consecutively and then go through and make the changes in registry but you may have to create some of the keys and values as they don't exist until you have changed the setting the first time. Like you I am looking for a registry setting that will change the default behavior so any newdrive plugged in will be set to write cache automatically, let me know if you find it please.

Ken