Vista's ReadyBoost flash drives lack significant boost

[techtronic]

Windows Vista's Windows ReadyBoost sounds too good to be true, and based on our extensive lab tests, it is. The technology promises to let you speed up Windows by plugging an inexpensive USB flash drive into your PC. But we found that while ReadyBoost may speed up Vista a tiny bit, it can also slow it down in some instances.

The premise is this: Although writing data to and reading it from a flash drive is, in most cases, slower than writing and reading to a hard drive, if the data is scattered randomly in small chunks, then flash drives are faster. Vista's ReadyBoost is supposed to use that one speed advantage to create a faster, flash-drive-based cache of one of Windows' major bottlenecks -- the swap file on your hard drive that most Windows operations use. So ReadyBoost should theoretically speed up certain frequently performed Windows tasks such as loading programs.

The technology works with only the fastest flash drives -- those capable of 3.5MB/sec. throughput for 4KB random reads, and 2.5MB/sec. speeds for 512KB random writes. For this article, the PC World Test Center and I looked at three ReadyBoost-capable drives: Kingston's 1GB DataTraveler ReadyFlash, Lexar Media's 4GB JumpDrive Lightning and Ritek's Ridata 1GB Twister EZ Drive.

Source : http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9019742

[rakeshishere]

Yes....This Info is certainly True

[gxsaurav]

Oh comon, whoever expects Readyboost to be RAM replacement must be out of his mind.

[eddie]

^ Please don't read just the last two lines in an article. Read the whole page before making comments. The article talks about the difference between flash drive and swap file on hard drive...not RAM. The second last line is just supposed to be an advice and not a reflection on the fact mentioned in the article.

[great_manish]

hmm...readyboost works fine with my 1 gb sd card(courtesy my roomie's digicam)...costs just Rs. 650.....howz that for a cheap performance boost ???

[aryayush]

I used my Corsair Flash Voyager 1 GB flash drive with Vista and certainly did not experience any boost in responsiveness of the operating system. Of course, I already have two gigabytes of RAM installed so maybe the feature is not for me anyway. Vista is certainly slower than XP though.

[gxsaurav]

Vista is certainly slower than XP though.

On similar hardware, Vista is faster then XP. However on new hardware or old hardware unless you have proper driver support Vista will be slow.

Are you running it on Macbook ? Try installing the official intel drivers insted of the ones provided by Apple

The chipset is 945PM + ICH7

[great_manish]

what ive noticed is that vista certainly boots up faster than xp.....

[suhasde]

Can this ReadyBoost feature be used with any Motherboard/Processor or we need to have selected MB/CPU also?

[infra_red_dude]

readyboost requires a fast flash drive and doesn't haf anything to do wid mobo/cpu combo

[rakeshishere]

Originally Posted by infra_red_dude

readyboost requires a fast flash drive and doesn't haf anything to do wid mobo/cpu combo

And Also OS should be Vista along with a compatible ReadyBoost Flash drive

[infra_red_dude]

Originally Posted by rakeshishere

And Also OS should be Vista along with a compatible ReadyBoost Flash drive

vista? obvisouly!! regarding 'compatible readyboost drive' a fast drive is enough. even if its not a certified one but has reasonably fast speeds it can be used for readyboost (tho i never saw any performance gain due to readyboost!)

[Ankur Gupta]

Well I used my San Disk Cruzer 1GB drive as ready boost and did not get any significant boost even though I have only 512MB RAM...
Having more RAM is the only way out...seems like a useless feature to me..more of a marketing gimmick...

[rakeshishere]

Originally Posted by infra_red_dude

vista? obvisouly!! regarding 'compatible readyboost drive' a fast drive is enough. even if its not a certified one but has reasonably fast speeds it can be used for readyboost (tho i never saw any performance gain due to readyboost!)

I just mentioned that coz I have seen innumerous queries in this forum- "whether is it possible to have ReadyBoost feature in XP?"

ANNOUNCEMENT
Currently,No hacks/tweaks have been found to use this kind of a feature in XP

[infra_red_dude]

Originally Posted by rakeshishere

ANNOUNCEMENT
Currently,No hacks/tweaks have been found to use this kind of a feature in XP

yeah rakesh.. true .....

but i think even in vista this feature is useless. i've tried it on several computers.. wid different flash drives.. some which were readyboost certified... i didn't find any noticable difference in performance.

[tarey_g]

Originally Posted by ankurgupta.me

Well I used my San Disk Cruzer 1GB drive as ready boost and did not get any significant boost even though I have only 512MB RAM...
Having more RAM is the only way out...seems like a useless feature to me..more of a marketing gimmick...

Is your drive passing the the min specs to be used as readyboost. Chk the MS site . A non compatible pen drive will slow down the process instead of speeding it . I have tested this with my (below specs )Transcend 1gb drive and it sucked. So before posting comments here pls chk the compatibility of your drive.

[rakeshishere]

Originally Posted by infra_red_dude

yeah rakesh.. true .....

but i think even in vista this feature is useless. i've tried it on several computers.. wid different flash drives.. some which were readyboost certified... i didn't find any noticable difference in performance.

^^ Me too ..But i do have seen People reporting a considerable amount of diff @ Winvista official blogs where users did notice perfomance while working on Photoshop CS3

[Ankur Gupta]

Originally Posted by tarey_g

Is your drive passing the the min specs to be used as readyboost. Chk the MS site . A non compatible pen drive will slow down the process instead of speeding it . I have tested this with my (below specs )Transcend 1gb drive and it sucked. So before posting comments here pls chk the compatibility of your drive.

Yes the drive is Ready Boost Compatible...
And yeah many Transcend ones are not...
I never said it slowed my PC,I said that it didnot show any significant performance boost..

[tarey_g]

Originally Posted by ankurgupta.me

Yes the drive is Ready Boost Compatible...
And yeah many Transcend ones are not...
I never said it slowed my PC,I said that it didnot show any significant performance boost..

what drive you have and what are the specs?

[ranjan2001]

I assume we can use a portable usb hdd too for doing this, is that right?? or it has to be a flash drive?

[freshseasons]

Originally Posted by ranjan2001

I assume we can use a portable usb hdd too for doing this, is that right?? or it has to be a flash drive?

I think the flash drive is preferable.
The USB harddisk will not be able to pass the ready boost test when Vista asks for in when you plug it.Moreover there is no significant boost from the harddisk.
The Very purpose of ReadyBoost is taking those files of slow harddisk.
So it has to be Flash Drive.