Im trying the Readyboost feature of Vista with a hi-speed 16 gb USB 2.0 using the recommended amount of space on the USB stick. At the moment i have two gigs of RAM but that will be expanded into four at the end of the month. Using Vista Ultimate sp1.

My question is, has anybody really noticed any significant performance increase using the Readyboost feature? With my very limited experience of it, it seems to boot the computer slower and not adding any noticeable peformance enhancements? Please share your experiences on this subject?

Initially you do get a slight performance hit from ReadyBoost, but after a few days/weeks of using it (assuming your flash device is permanently plugged in and never used for any other purpose) then it should make the computer a little faster in most cases.

The 16GB looks like overkill though, and I suspect that you're not going to be leaving it permanently plugged in. If you're using it for other purposes than for ReadyBoost, as I guess you must be, then you're not going to be seeing a performance improvement.

Another case where a flash drive will not improve performance is if you have a hybrid SATA drive installed, with flash memory included -- adding a USB flash drive will not increase performance in that case.

Ideally, ReadyBoost needs a dedicated flash memory device always plugged in, of a capacity equal to or greater than your installed RAM. If you leave that 16GB flash drive permanently plugged in it should do the job, although 2 GB should be fine given your specs -- and would leave your 16GB job free for other purposes.

The general consensus on Readyboost is that it was designed for low memory systems and that little to no increase should be expected for systems with 2gb or more RAM installed.

I agree with this. I have 2gb RAM installed and tried Readyboost with an 8gb flash drive (4gb allocated for Readyboost) and I could see no difference at all. To me it's a waste of a flash drive.

Mark

markcynt wrote:

The general consensus on Readyboost is that it was designed for low memory systems and that little to no increase should be expected for systems with 2gb or more RAM installed. I agree with this. I have 2gb RAM installed and tried Readyboost with an 8gb flash drive (4gb allocated for Readyboost) and I could see no difference at all. To me it's a waste of a flash drive.

Everything is relative -- in the future when x64 systems will be the norm, a 2GB RAM computer will be seen as a "low memory system"

And like I said, the flash drive needs to be permanently plugged in, and no immediate speed increase occurs -- only after you have rebooted several times and over the course of days and weeks will any performance increase actually occur.

I agree with you a fair amount though, markcynt -- in systems where the amount of RAM installed far outstrips the memory requirements of the software, ReadyBoost will do little more than provide a marginal improvement of your boot and wake-up times from Off to Desktop

So it is only vital for low memory systems as you've suggested, and in systems being used for memory-intensive software like video editing and gaming -- in other words, in systems where a large paging file is needed

Thanks for answers, dudes. Yes, the USB memory is always connected to the computer and is exclusivly used for Readyboost. Maybe 16 gb is a bit overkill, iŽll use my 8 gb instead as soon as i get my extra 2 gigs of RAM. The conclusion i can draw from your answers is that in a system with average use and 4 gigs of RAM (with a 32 bit operating system) the Readyboost feature is of no or minimal use, is that correct?

I've had my flash drive in for a month now and I see no difference. If there is a difference I can't tell. The only reason I still have the flash drive in there is because I haven't needed it for anything else.

Hope this helps.

Mark

Little Caesar wrote:

Thanks for answers, dudes. Yes, the USB memory is always connected to the computer and is exclusivly used for Readyboost. Maybe 16 gb is a bit overkill, iŽll use my 8 gb instead as soon as i get my extra 2 gigs of RAM. The conclusion i can draw from your answers is that in a system with average use and 4 gigs of RAM (with a 32 bit operating system) the Readyboost feature is of no or minimal use, is that correct?

Yep

markcynt wrote:

I've had my flash drive in for a month now and I see no difference. If there is a difference I can't tell. The only reason I still have the flash drive in there is because I haven't needed it for anything else.

I've been doing some gaming in recent months, and ReadyBoost certainly makes a positive difference to the performance of the games

I thought that Microsoft said the maximum space Readyboost will use is 4GB, no matter how large the USB stick is. I would recommend not getting a 16GB USB stick, but one of the faster 4GB USB sticks.

EDIT: As stated in an MSDN blog:

Quote:

Q: Why can't I use more than 4GB of flash? A: The FAT32 filesystem limits our ReadyBoost.sfcache file to 4GB

Source: Tom Archer's Blog

It also states on this blog that a copy of the pagefile is also still stored on the hard drive so that negates the positive aspect of the hard drive not needing to go back and forth to the pagefile updating it. There will be a small improvement in reading the pagefile, but I think the biggest improvement that Readyboost could have offered is the ability to only store the pagefile on the flash drive so the hard drive wouldn't have to do so much work updating the pagefile.

mnemonicj wrote:

I thought that Microsoft said the maximum space Readyboost will use is 4GB, no matter how large the USB stick is. I would recommend not getting a 16GB USB stick, but one of the faster 4GB USB sticks. EDIT: As stated in an MSDN blog: Quote: Q: Why can't I use more than 4GB of flash? A: The FAT32 filesystem limits our ReadyBoost.sfcache file to 4GB Source: Tom Archer's Blog It also states on this blog that a copy of the pagefile is also still stored on the hard drive so that negates the positive aspect of the hard drive not needing to go back and forth to the pagefile updating it. There will be a small improvement in reading the pagefile, but I think the biggest improvement that Readyboost could have offered is the ability to only store the pagefile on the flash drive so the hard drive wouldn't have to do so much work updating the pagefile.

I can see your point here, but what you are referring to is the FAT32 4 gb limit, and that does not apply to users of the NTFS file system, am i correct?

EDIT: Sorry, wasnt thinking of the fact that the USB stick uses FAT32. My bad........