In summing up, its "Safely Remove Hardware", its "Optimize for performance", its "Write Caching", its "the vibe", its "Mabo"

If you use external USB hard drives, you might not know that Windows XP sp2 (and presumably other versions) enacts a policy on these 'hot' removable devices, which limits their performance by default.

If you open Computer Management, and navigate to Disk Manager, and right click on your removable hdd, select "Properties", then select the "Policies" tab, you will notice the device is "Optimized for quick removal", meaning you do not need to select the Safely Remove Hardware icon before disconnecting it; great for memory keys and ipods, but not great for mass storage devices. Change the setting to "Optimize for performance", and you will effectively enable write caching to the device.

bam!

29 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes, 33 second

Thats the current uptime on my home pc - not too shabby for a windows xp system, especially compared with the days of Windows NT 4 Workstation; I am forced to shut down my pc to install another 300 Gb hdd into my machine; I particularly didnt want to have to do this, which is why I thought to purchase an external 3.5" enclosure for it when I purchased the drive. The problem however, occured when I unwrapped the enclosure, the power cable and usb connection were not present. It was at that time, with glee, I recall the computer storeman taking it out, handing it to me to look at, before I handed it back to him, and looked around the store while he created the invoice. Seems he didnt put the accessories back in. If it weren't xmas day, I would have gone back for it. As my friends and family will tell you, I am impatient, so it is now time to shut down my pc and dig around int he cables, ho ho bloody ho.