ReadyBoost Compatibility Chart
ReadyBoost is a new feature of Windows Vista which uses flash memory on a USB drive to boost system performance. It uses the USB drive as a hard disk cache and/or virtual memory store to speed up file access and increase the apparent RAM available.
Many people have asked on forums how this could possibly be effective - after all, flash memory has a much slower data transfer rate than most hard disks. That’s true, but the trick is that good flash memory has a much lower seek time than a hard disk. By placing many small files on the USB drive, Windows can randomly access these files much more quickly than is normally possible from a hard disk.
The key point is that the USB drive must have very fast seek times. Many USB flash memory devices, even those with high data transfer rates, don’t have sufficiently fast seek times to make them useful for ReadyBoost. Unfortunately, manufacturers don’t normally publish random seek times for flash memory like they do for hard disks. This makes shopping for a ReadyBoost compatible flash drive a bit of a lottery.
It’s possible to force Windows to accept any device for ReadyBoost use via a registry hack. However, this is not recommended, as the high latency will reduce system performance rather than improve it.
I searched everywhere for a definitive source of ReadyBoost compatible devices, but I couldn’t find one. So I decided to start one of my own. You can access it here: ReadyBoost Compatibilty Chart
If you’re currently using Vista and have tried ReadyBoost with your device, please submit your results here.
Comments are welcome!
Hi Grant,
I was reading about Samsung’s NAND flash drive which is designed for Vista’s Ready Boost. They claim it can perform 5,000 simultaneous requests per second, which makes it ideal. However, it is not in a USB format and will instead plug into the flash memory card slots found on notebooks, which seems to me to be a better idea than the USB slot.
Can you comment on this and advise on if flash memory cards will be supported in Vista and if they will provide superiour performance to USB devices?
I was thinking of running their 8GB version and also putting the pagefile on it (might need to have two partitions, if that is possible).
Comment by Nick — October 2, 2006 @ 4:39 am
Hi Nick,
Flash cards (e.g. SD cards) are supported for Vista ReadyBoost. I’ve read of other people using them successfully and noticed that Bryant Likes had posted a successful use of his 2GB Patriot SD card in his built-in card slot. However, I’ve also read elsewhere that external SD card readers generally don’t work, so built in card readers are best for this.
You’re right that an internal slot option would be better than USB - especially for a laptop. On my desktop machine its really no problem to have a USB stick permanently in the back, but I can see how that would be a pain on a laptop.
The 8GB Samsung drive should be ideal for ReadyBoost. However, I’m unsure about putting a regular pagefile on there too - raw read rates are generally pretty slow from Flash. ReadyBoost works because it caches only very small files on the Flash cache. I suspect running a big swap file from Flash memory would actually be slower than running it from a standard HDD, but I could be wrong…
Let me know how you get on if you decide to go ahead.
Comment by grant — October 2, 2006 @ 8:55 pm
I have ready there is a reghack to allow Vista to accept any USB stick drive (even if it fails the test). Can someone tell me how?
Comment by Thomas Stuart — October 25, 2006 @ 6:10 pm
I’ve read that ReadyBoost will also be able to utilize RAM from other Vista machines in the local network. Although the idea sounds interesting, I don’t really see how can network data transfer speeds be enough for something like this. Any ideas?
Comment by frantic — November 10, 2006 @ 1:18 pm
Grant dont bother with 8gig as 4gig is max at the mo,and stuart dont bother either with hack,it runs like a pig,I have tried.
Comment by mauriceuk — November 22, 2006 @ 12:12 pm
What would give me the most performance boost, adding 1 gig of RAM to my 1gig machine or adding 1 gig of ReadyBoost device to my one gig machine? Whatabout adding 2gigs of ReadyBoost, would that give me more performance than adding 1 gig of ram? Thinking of buying SanDisk Cruzer Titanium U3 2gb.
Comment by andreas birgerson — November 28, 2006 @ 9:40 pm
Andreas - RAM is generally better, but I think it all depends on what you’re using the machine for.
Flash memory is slower but doesn’t lose its contents when you turn the power off. So if you’re using your PC for short periods of time (where it wouldn’t have a chance to build much of a disk cache in RAM) you might get a better boost out of Flash memory.
I’ve read elsewhere that the ideal ratio on machines with limited RAM is 2:1, so you’d ideally add a 2GB Flash drive to a machine with 1GB of RAM. At the higher end that no longer applies - 4GB Flash is perfect for a 4GB machine - although few people will have a need for that much random access memory.
Comment by grant — November 30, 2006 @ 2:46 pm
I’ve read that eventually we’ll get packaging that says “Enhanced for ReadyBoost” and that the specs are:
* At least 500MB available for ReadyBoost cache
* 5 MB/sec throughput for random 4k reads across the entire device
* 3 MB/sec throughput for sequential 512k writes across the entire device
Although, I see on your compatibility chart that 256MB devices are working fine for people.
Comment by Scott Kingery — December 1, 2006 @ 12:16 am
Scott - that’s really interesting. If I’m working this out correctly, that means the device must handle 1,280+ random reads/sec (5*1024 / 4).
For a HDD to match that performance, it would need to have a random seek time of less than 0.7ms. That’s over 10x faster than today’s typical HDD’s (e.g. WD Caviar 200GB at 8.9ms) and goes some way to explain the difference between ReadyBoost and traditional HDD ‘virtual memory’ - for small file reads ReadyBoost is a minimum of 10x faster.
Comment by grant — December 1, 2006 @ 10:36 am
Are there any utilities to test ReadyBoost functionality? Last night I installed a multi-card card reader in an unused floppy bay and placed a PQI 2GB unit in the CF slot. (It says 60X on the CF card but I’m unclear as to the value of X in CF cards, compared to well defined X values for stuff like DVD reads.)
I didn’t get a ReadyBoost popup prompt but the tab was there in the drive properties and it accepted the CF card. I allocated the maximum amount of capacity. So on one hand, I didn’t have to force the system to accept the card but I’m not confident it offers the necessary performance to achieve ReadyBoost’s goals.
Comment by epobirs — January 25, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
Back when windows 3.1 was the rage, and most businesses used DOS, a DOS program called FAST allowed up to 8 megs of sys RAM memory ($80 a meg back then) to be used as a hard drive cache. This really improved the speed of processing data. I also used an IDE bus installed hard drive card with 4 megs of mem onboard. The IDE card was much slower than the RAM system memory for caching the hard drive, even though it had the same memory sticks installed as would have been installed on the motherboard. I found thru experiment that a FAST cache of 2 megs memory was all that was needed to make a i386 work as fast as a i486. Win 95 and 98 could be setup to use FAST, but it was a little tricky due to how win95-98 did a shutdown. FAST was better than using the VM swap file in windows. Sound like a power boost could be faster with a dedicated sys RAM cache for the hard drive instead of a USB drive, but the program would have to run beneath Windows( kinda like a dll) and the cache cleared before Windows shutdown. Can ReadyBoost be configured with Sys RAM ?
Comment by Ken Berg — January 25, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
If Vista doesn’t accept the Flash device as being compatible at first, play around with the format settings. I saw many reports on here of the PNY Attache devices not working, which is what vista told me too. Until i formatted it to NTFS with 16kb allocation size then it worked great.
Comment by Dezzy — January 31, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
I can not stress this enough for those complaining that the feature doesnt work or you are having problems with performance with SD memory class flash drives.
please ensure that your SD Memory host control is of the drivers from your manufacturer and not using the Standard Microsoft SD Host control. the standard one is designed for over all compatibility and basic performance levels.
once you upgrade that you will not have problems so long as your memory fits the req.
Cheers
Comment by GrimNewz — February 4, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
It is an interesting Vista capability I was unaware of, not being a Vista user myself. One feedback message asked about the flash card speed of 66X. At wikipedia.org, under Secure Digital Cards, subheading Speed, one can read how to convert 150X to something more meaningful. According to the wiki entry, the cards use the same base speed rate as CD-ROMs, 150 KBps, so (150 x 150 KBs) = 22.5 MBps.
Comment by Hugh Murphy — February 28, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
Can anyone comment on whether this device should be set for ‘Optimize for safe removal’ or ‘Optimze for performance?’
An NTFS format of a USB key sets it to ‘Optimize for safe removal’ and this setting disables write caching. Yet, it will still set up correclty for ReadyBoost and appears to work.
Setting it to ‘Optimze for performance’ appears to be the proper option, but then you have to use the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ option to remove it.
BUT ReadyBoost info says you can remove the key at any time and not affect things, so WHICH is it???
Comment by Bill Kennedy — March 22, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
I’ve formated the Transcend 2GB 150x SD flash (TS2GSD150) using NTFS @ 16K, and I still get non-compatible. This devices shows up as ReadyBoost compatible in the Transcend listings.
Any suggestions?
Comment by Irv K — March 29, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
I have an Apacer AH-320 which shows up as ReadyBoost compatible and I have every combination of formating and optimize for speed but no luck. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Comment by Patrick — March 31, 2007 @ 4:31 am
Just received a 2GB Flash Disk bought on eBay (cheapest on offer). Tried it on every USB socket front & back of PC & USB 4-port divider. Nothing, properties just said not up to spec. Decided it just wasn’t fast enough & so thought I might as well just format it (NTFS) & use it as a memory stick. After formatting put it in the front USB PC slot, looked at properties & now it asked if I wanted to use it as a Readyboost disk. Said yes & now Windows Explorer sees it as a Readyboost disk. Formatting it seems to have worked with this one??
Comment by Frank Murphy — April 3, 2007 @ 6:46 pm
I bought a Crucial Gizmo 4GB, plugged it in and it said it did not have the required performance for ReadyBoost, but after I tweaked the setting for QUOTA management, by enabling it, now the ReadyBoost tab, and settings have become available. This means that for the Vista default settings this drive doesn’t work for ReadyBoost, until Quota management is enabled. I hope this may help other users.
Comment by Davie — April 13, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
Hi,
By using google I found a freeware program called Crystaldiskmark that measures 4k/512k random read/write speeds, in my case none of my usb flash drives passed the write test, maybe someone else could post results? thanks in advance.
Sequential Read : 7.645 MB/s
Sequential Write : 3.142 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 7.306 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 0.493 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 3.320 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.012 MB/s
Comment by Luis — April 16, 2007 @ 2:01 am
————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 1.0 (C) 2007 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World [http://crystalmark.info/]
————————————————–
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4GB (non-Readyboost) fails ReadyBoost test in all USB slots on a Vaio VGN-A297XP. Crystaldiskmark showed the following unimpressive figures:
Sequential Read : 14.873 MB/s
Sequential Write : 8.263 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 14.548 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.037 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 2.612 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.033 MB/s
Date : 2007/04/23 21:33:45
Comment by Bill — April 23, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
Yes, to pass the readyboost test your flash drive needs to meet these standards:
2.5 MB/sec throughout for 4 KB random reads
1.75 MB/sec throughout for 512 KB random writes
Luis and Davie, your random write speeds for 512KB aren’t reaching the minimum of 1.75MB/s.
Comment by RJ — April 28, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
Off all of my SDCARDS (ADATA 256MB, Kingston 512MB, Toshiba 1GB & 2 GB)for may camera, my 3 year old A-Data 256MB SDCARD is ready boost compatible to vista…
I’ve haven’t noticed a difference with my laptop’s gain in performance. So I’ve purchase a 4GB ADATA SDCARD hopefully to see a difference..abnd it disappoints me..
My Laptop’s Specs
Core2 Duo 1.6
1GB RAM - 2x 512 MB Sticks
100 GB HDD Space
4GB A-Data 150X SDCARD
Comment by Polymer — May 3, 2007 @ 3:08 am
is using a flash drive an alternative to installing additional ram modules internally? will i get the same results? in other words, instead of taking my comp. apart to install 2 gb of more memory i can use a 2 gb flash drive with the same outcome?
Comment by steve — May 13, 2007 @ 11:00 am
Steve - ReadyBoost does a similar (though not identical) job as adding more RAM, in that it minimises the need to read/write to hard drive. Hard drives are a very slow form of memory, so a good flash drive will improve performance.
However, RAM chips are faster than flash memory by a factor of around 100:1, so RAM is definitely a better option for performance.
Comment by grant — May 14, 2007 @ 9:35 am
faster seek and write times is better readyboost? or is’nt it that important as you meet the minimum requirements.
Comment by jeroen — May 15, 2007 @ 9:45 am
I need to know if the SanDisk 4 GB Cruzer U3 Smart works with the ReadyBoost Technology
Comment by Raul — May 24, 2007 @ 7:14 am
I bought a new dual core 1GB/120GB Vista notebook hoping to run an Avid Pro video editing program.
Unfortunately, it failed to install on Vista.
Next move is to multi-boot to XP.
Is it better to install XP on a 4GB SD card, or a 4GB USB flash?
If it fails, any better ideas?
Heard we cannot install XP on USB flash.
My last option is to partition the 120GB hard drive using partition magic, because I do not have one and do not have connfidence in it.
Thanks.
Comment by Wong Mau — June 5, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
Hi Grant
I was looking at using a SD card for ReadyBoost and decided to go for the Transcend 4Gb SD 150x as this was ReadyBoost compatible on your tables. I received the card this morning but now when I plug it in to the laptop (Acer Aspire 3693WLmi) Vista says that the SD card is not ReadyBoost compatible. I was wondering if you could tell me what to do, as I’m new to Vista!
Thanks in advance
Howard
Comment by Howard — June 15, 2007 @ 4:02 pm
Hi Howard,
Sorry to hear it didn’t work for you right away. I read that the user Topgun managed to get his Transcend 150x working after he re-formatted it using FAT 32 (it’s under ‘file system’ when you go into the format option for your flash drive). You could also try NTFS format if it’s availble.
Some people have reported having to re-test their devices a few times before they’ll be accepted as compatible, so you might want to try that too.
Good luck, and let me know if you have any more problems.
Grant.
Comment by grant — June 18, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
Is it possible to use a flash drive (Such as a 4 GB Cruzer U3) And a Sd Card (Such As SD Extreme lll 2 GB)At The Same Time? ; Will This Increase System Performace or make it slower or no difference? Does anybody Know or tried it similar?
Comment by Ray — June 24, 2007 @ 6:37 am
After installing XP in another partition, unable to boot to Vista again.
Please help.
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
wongmauho@yahoo.com
Comment by Wong Mau — June 24, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
Am thinking of using Corsair Turboflash 1GB. Question is, do I allot the full 1GB for ReadyBoost? I have 1GB RAM right now, and I have read it’s best to keep a 4 to 1 ratio RAM to ReadyBoost.
Comment by William — June 28, 2007 @ 2:43 am
Purchased the 4GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro U3 - plugged it into my new T60P ThinkPad:
Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz
80GB 7200 rpm HD
2GB of RAM
Running Windows Vista Business Edition.
The Cruzer works great, system is slightly more snappy in performance. I’ve considered going to 4GB of system RAM but the Cruzer was on sale @ Bestbuy for $49 - sweet price and any performance gain is good in my books, especially for that price. Bottom line, I’m happy.
Comment by Mike — July 27, 2007 @ 11:10 pm
I’ve seen all the ready boost capatible usb drives on your site. I was overwhelmed reading all of them. What I’m thinking of buying a laptop computer with Windows Vista Home Premium. I can save $150 by getting only 1GB of ram, instead of 2GB. Then buy a 2Gb usb ready boost flash drive. Which one of all of these would you absoultly recommend, if you were to do this. I’m wanting one with the least problems, that would work, for sure.
Comment by GERALD FERGUSON — July 28, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Gerald - If I was buying a new laptop and had the option I’d definitely take the extra RAM. Even if it was going to add say 10% to the overall laptop cost vs a Flash drive, the extra RAM will be a more effective performance boost.
Also, extra RAM has a fairly consistent effect across all memory-intensive applications, whereas the effectiveness of ReadyBoost varies depending on a lot of different factors (hardware, software and the way you tend to use the machine).
Hope that helps.
Comment by grant — July 29, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
Thanks Grant, that helps a lot.
Comment by Gerald Ferguson — July 30, 2007 @ 5:53 am
Readyboost will remain a useless
feature until flash card chips are seriously bandwidth enhanced to achieve at least 140 to 170MB/s, there is no point of using caches if theyre as slow as hard drives. the purpose here is speeding transfers up, only when they got chips of 2gigs at 800x should people take ready-boost seriously.
only then will it be a real noticeable power boost.
Comment by OL8 — August 7, 2007 @ 3:09 am
fastest drives : the ramsan400, E-Disk Altima SATA 2.5, HyperXCLR, SanDisk UATA 5000 1.8″ , HyperDrive4 and the Mtron, are some of the fastest in the world, but when flash drives and cards hit 150 MB/S it will be seriously hot.
Comment by OL8 — August 7, 2007 @ 3:24 am
My laptop of AMD turon 64 has 512M ram
and came with vista home basic
I upgraded it to home premium and now its very slow and also 3D aviation /aero doesn’t work ;so I am helpless now . option is to try a ready boost USB
but I don’t know which one to choose for 512M
in the PC mag says for 512M only recommends a flash drive with 512 to 1.25G but I couldn’t find any ready boost ready flash drives any where as the majority even doesn’t hear about them! please help me to find a solution.
Comment by nalin — August 10, 2007 @ 10:50 am
I used a PNY 4GB SD card on a Lenovo A100 with a SD card reader built in. Works great. Tried a SanDisk 6:1 PC Card reader in the PCMCIA slot with the same SD card, and it doesn’t work for Ready Boost. Anyone know why?
Comment by Jim McC — August 11, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Nalin your pc is slow on vista because vista has a pagefile of approximately 800MB. Get a new hard drive that has an STR of at least 80MB/s or more, do a 3 partition on your HDD one of 8 gigs for pagefile, one of 21 gigs for the OS and a third one the size of your choice for pics and music, And put your pagefile on the first partition of 8 gigs, the outer disk is where the hard drive is the fastest.After this your pc should be fine.
Comment by OL8 — September 6, 2007 @ 6:54 am
Are you supposed to defrag your Readyboost flash drive or not?
Comment by mrogi — September 8, 2007 @ 3:48 am
You shouldn’t need to bother defragging a flash drive. There are a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, ReadyBoost does a good job of optimising its own cache file for fastest access. Secondly, the reason you’d defrag a hard drive is to bring parts of a file together and that’s only necessary because hard drives take time to ’seek’ each part of the file. Flash drives don’t have that seek delay, so there’s no real benefit in defragging as far as I know.
Comment by grant — September 10, 2007 @ 9:30 am
I made the mistake of forcing my desktop to accept an inferior flash drive for ReadyBoost (via the now famous registry hack). As it did not help, I stopped using it. Now when I plug in other flash drives, I no longer get the ReadyBoost tab appearing on the Properites Box. I cannot locate ReadyBoost anywhere. What gives??
Comment by Joseph — September 29, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
Can I use multiple flash drives with ReadyBoost? Or can I only use 1 drive for either system or performance reasons? Thanks!
Comment by Sean — October 9, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
Hi Sean - ReadyBoost is currently limited to one Flash drive per machine. As far as I know it’s a restriction put in place by the programmers to keep the technology relatively simple.
This is really a version 1.0 technology. I’m sure if it’s successful Microsoft will consider extending the feature set in future Windows upgrades.
However, it’s possible that the benefits of ReadyBoost will become commonplace in integrated technologies, such as Hybrid Hard Drives, so the need for ReadyBoost itself will become less and less.
Comment by grant — October 10, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
i havent tried it but its possible to Raid-0 usb drives somehow, 2 usb drives in parralel would give a real ready boost with data transfer rates of at least 60MB/s or
actually 2 x30MB/s saturating the usb bus Vista really does have an 800MB pagefile of background processes and the desktop textures floating on the hard drive wich slows down a pc so a fastpage file on the HD is crucial, a more expensive option to fix vistas slowness is getting a cheetah drive (150MB/s) and *diskkeeper* wich will place the pagefile on the beggining of the H.disk.
Comment by suzieQ — October 11, 2007 @ 10:33 am
it would also be kinda nice if usb keys had a remote control to scan and track the usb key when its lost, hmm actually maybe not if others have a remote they can find yours eeek.
Comment by suzieQ — October 11, 2007 @ 10:38 am
I notice manufacturers seem to be raising prices on ReadyBoost compatible flash drives, in this area anyway. But also there are more sales on the imcompatible drives that are still out there — good if you use them for other purposes.
I got a good deal on a Kingston Data Traveller. I knew from your helpful list it was questionable for Ready Boost. But I’m finding it useful for taking files from place to place. So I’m still pleased with it.
I did finally get a San Disk Cruzer flash drive on sale that was labelled as ReadyBoost compatible. The result? It works, but there’s no noticeable improvement at all. Maybe, though that’s because my HP a1730n computer was, all things considered, fairly good to begin with.
I’ve kept the San Disk flash drive and left it in for ReadyBoost anyway. I always felt ReadyBoost was a bit of a gimmick, and so am not disappointed as I might otherwise have been. I figure later I might find other uses for the flash drive.
Comment by Denise Moore — October 13, 2007 @ 8:00 am
I am just trying to figure out what Brand and Model SD Card to buy to use with a laptop where a USB drive is not ideal. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Comment by Malon Courts — October 23, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
Test Tools:
What is the best random access test tool for gauging seek speed? BTW, might I suggest adding a “top 50 fastest cards” list to this site, based on user reports?
Hack for XP?
Anyone seen/heard of any hacks to make Ready Boost available for WinXP?
Comment by CA — October 25, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
USB-2 is going to USB-3 soon so maybe flash drives will also get faster than 39MB/s, and readuboost will make a huge difference. My advice for now though is dont buy a new computer until usb-3 and displayport comes out, these are big speed improvements and are worth the wait.
I almost bought a 1300$ rig with asus nivida and ocz components and backout just in time.
Comment by BL21 — October 28, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
corsair flash voyager GT 4GB
————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 1.0 (C) 2007 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
————————————————–
Sequential Read : 33.765 MB/s
Sequential Write : 27.955 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 33.549 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 10.368 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 6.519 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.127 MB/s
Date : 2007/11/16 21:43:34
works nice for readyboost
Comment by Joe — November 17, 2007 @ 3:48 am
I have a 64GB Solid State C: Drive. Will ready boost help that, since there is no HDD activity, except for data files.
Comment by Glenn — January 2, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
Glenn - your Flash-based hard drive is really ReadyBoost taken to its logical conclusion. Since it’s already made up of solid state (presumably NAND) chips it inherently has all the speed benefits of ReadyBoost.
The only thing you’d want to do is check that your PC is using this C: drive for “virtual memory” — effectively a disk-based RAM expansion, in the same sense as ReadyBoost. In Vista, Virtual Memory settings are buried in:
Control Panel > System and Maintenance > System > Advanced System Settings (on the left) > Advanced Tab > Performance Settings… > Advanced Tab > Virtual Memory Change…
Just check that it is enabled, and that it’s using your solid-state drive for virtual memory storage.
Comment by grant — January 4, 2008 @ 11:59 am
If I understand Grant correctly, those who have not maxed out their system RAM should do this first, instead of purposely buying a Ready-Boost Ready flash drive.
For instance, one comment above said they had 512M system ram, upgraded the OS to Vista Business, and their system now ran very slow. They were asking what flash drive should they buy?? I believe you should be buying system ram instead for heaven sake.
If you already own a flash-drive, it makes sense to use it for Ready Boost if it is useable. If you system isn’t maxed out with system ram, it makes no sense to buy a flash drive specifically to improve system performance.
Comment by Jim R — March 7, 2008 @ 11:17 am
I’m chiming in to say that I just bought a 4Gb USB drive from Best Buy. It is a Geek Squad branded drive with U3 software installed. Vista recommended using 3740MB and it seems to be working fine.
I didn’t see it on your list, so I figured I’d give notice. Also, it was relatively inexpensive at only $37.
Comment by Jason Peltier — March 15, 2008 @ 2:41 am
What is the fastest possible interface AND card for ReadyBoost on a Dell M1530 XPS with an ExpressCard slot and an 8 in 1 card reader slot, i.e. is ExpressCard - which some say runs at USB speeds due to notebook design limitations and others say can run in a Dell m1530 at the faster 2.4 gig/s PCIE speeds - a faster interface than any of the formats that can be read in the 8 in 1 reader - which most say are limited to USB speeds; AND will a Lexar 16 gig Expresscard running in a m1530 interface at PCIE speeds or at USB speeds? If the Lexar in an m1530 will only run at USB speeds, then is there a 8 in 1 card option that will effectgively run just as fast? Cost is not a factor.
Comment by Curt — March 18, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
Guys,
Ive just heard about ready boost, ive got internal 8gb G-Skill PC2-8500 dual channal 1066Mhz @ 5-5-5-15.
I was thinking of getting GB OCZ RALLY2 USB DRIVE ready boost, im having second thoughts,
i mostly do gaming, i just wanna know what i would be like with 16gb RAM.
Should i get it or not ?
Comment by Raks — April 25, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
i mean 8gb OCZ RALLY2 USB DRIVE ready boost
Comment by Raks — April 25, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
Hi
I was wondering if anyone could awnswer my question? : Does Windows XP Media center edition support Readyboost technology?
Comment by Ben — May 11, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
Apacer Handy Steno AH320 8GB
fails 1.75 MB/sec throughout for 512 KB random writes:
————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
————————————————–
Sequential Read : 27.620 MB/s
Sequential Write : 8.769 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 27.962 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.464 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 6.383 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.011 MB/s
Test Size : 50 MB
Date : 2008/05/14 16:27:57
Comment by Etienne — May 14, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
The answer is NO.
Comment by David — May 15, 2008 @ 7:26 am
I have the Lexar Jumpdrive Firefly 2 gigs and you say that the ready boost doesnt work because of slow write speeds. But when I plug it in my laptop it says right away do I want to use the device for ready boost. Its always flashing like its working. What do you think? Love to learn more about it!!
Comment by Branon — May 23, 2008 @ 1:08 am