Windows – How to tell if the motherboard / disk drive support NCQ

hard drivemotherboardwindows

How do I tell if my motherboard & disk drive support native command queueing? Is it in the device manager, or somewhere else? Windows has a checkbox for "Enable write caching" which is currently unchecked, but it says "This device does not allow its write cache setting to be modified".

Thanks!

Best Answer

If you use the HD Tune tool, its Info tab shows when NCQ is supported in your system. The regular version is free for personal use.

alt text

In this example, NCQ is not supported.

Related Solutions

Windows – Which drive is \Device\Harddisk1\DR1

Run the following PowerShell command as Administrator:

Get-PhysicalDisk | Select -Prop DeviceId,FriendlyName,SerialNumber

This will show output like:

DeviceId FriendlyName              SerialNumber
-------- ------------              ------------
1        ST1000DM003-9YN162        S1D2RPMB
5        ST1000DM003-1CH162        Z1D3CPP3
2        ST1000DM003-9YN162        S1D34BYN
0        Corsair Force LS SSD      144381700001017402C2
4        WDC WD10EFRX-68PJCN0      WD-WCC4J9CC8112
3        Samsung SSD 950 PRO 256GB 0025_3853_61B0_3DD0.

The DeviceId corresponds to the N in the \Device\HardDiskN path.

This command is useful when you are using Storage Spaces, which can prevent the physical disks from appearing in the tools referenced in the other answers, like DiskPart.

Windows – How to forcibly disable (spin down) an internal Hard Drive (Windows 10 v1903)

I will answer how I managed to find a solution. Note that it doesn't have to work for you, it does on my Windows v1903 machine with Toshiba P300 hard drive.

Download Windows v1607 .iso (https://tb.rg-adguard.net/public.php)
Extract "SATA AHCI Controller" and "DiskDrive" drivers from the v1607 Windows
Install the old drivers, I assume they work for any version above v1607.
Use software called HotSwap! to spin down the drive (it does that after ~5s). So far, after 3 days of testing, the HDD doesn't seem to spin up by itself. Even when launching software like HWInfo, CPU-Z, or CrystalDiskInfo. The only way to make it active again is by doing "Scan for hardware changes" (you can do that with DevCon Rescan/Device Manager).

I've uploaded the v1607 drivers HERE. In order to install them you need to disable "Signed Driver Enforcement", since for some reason they don't seem to be signed by Microsoft once you export them. If you don't trust a random guy on the internet (and you shouldn't) then do it yourself.

You can export the drivers with just 7zip and the .iso. You'll be looking for 2 folders called "mshdc.inf_amd64_67bad2c7196330b6" and "disk.inf_amd64_1e7038548624f167" located in: Win10_1607_x64.iso\sources\install.wim\1\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\

Edit: The solution randomly stopped working after a few days. Seems like I underestimated how awful Windows is.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Which drive is \Device\Harddisk1\DR1

Windows – How to forcibly disable (spin down) an internal Hard Drive (Windows 10 v1903)

Related Question