In my case does write through actually mean to the platters or to the RAID controller's cache? In Windows' Device Manager the RAID volume doesn't support device write-cache at all but it's obvious when copying & pasting a big file that it's still in the hardware cache and not yet written to the ...

I have a much simpler case. I have a single server with an Adaptec 6805 RAID controller with a ZMCP protected 512MiB hardware cache. I am running the StarWind target on this server to provide iSCSI disks to a single client PC. Data/filesystem integrity is my primary concern. Is it better to disable ...

I meant is there no case where the StarPort Initiator should be used anymore? Is it completely superceded by the Microsoft Initiator for all configurations?

I also have a regular disk without deduplication (since I store encrypted containers on it there is no point in deduplication or deletion support). I have the same problem of the disk being mounted but unreadable a minute or two after logon. If I manually mount it (or toggle the auto-mounted disk of...

Yes. But now that you say it's no longer supported; nevermind.

I'm currently using StarWind iSCSI SAN v6.0.0 (Build 20130517, [SwSAN], Win64) with the Microsoft Initiator.
The device is a deduplicated disk with deletion support enabled and other parameters left at default. However the problem occurs with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target as well.

I've tried using all combinations of StarWind Target, StarPort Initiator, Microsoft Target and Microsoft Initiator. In all cases the remote disk goes dead shortly after logging in to Windows after a reboot. After logging in I am able to browse through most of the folders on the disk but many of the ...

Why was this done?

Automount is also disabled when using CHAP authentication. While it might be a security oxymoron to automount something with a password, having a locally stored password decrypted automatically is still better than allowing a connection if a client simply knows the IQN.