Intel DC P4510 SSD - Write Cache

[avaloth]

Finally registered after lurking for a while

I got myself a (Dell-branded) Intel DC P4510 8TB SSD to play with. Intention is to use it as a drive for desktop use, nothing scientific or professional. It is hooked up trough an M.2 to U.2 adapter and working fine. However one thing that bugs me is that write caching does not appear to be enabled.

Using Windows 11, I tried the usual way of enabling write cache by going to the hardware properties > policies > enable write caching, but Windows states “This device does not allow its write-caching settings to be changed”.

Next I tried using the Intel SSD Data Center Tool (isdct) which wasn’t really helpful and complained about some config file missing. Onwards to the rebranded version of that, the Solidigm Storage Tool (sst). That got me a little further:

.\sst set -ssd 1 WriteCacheEnabled=‘true’
Error: Device does not support this command set.

The documentation that I found mentioned something about write cache configuration for ATA devices only, but thought let’s try anyway. In a typical production configuration I can see the storage array controller taking on the task of doing write caching but in a desktop there’s no such thing.

Is there any method/command I can use to enable write caching in a standalone configuration if at all possible?