Has anyone actually tested ReadyBoost?

[psyko_x]

I'd like to know if there's a noticeable difference in application start times when you have this on.

[MMaster23]

i have 2Gigs of RAM in any Vista PC i use... so haven't tested it yet. Guess it will help as it will not take HDD for virtual memory so it will be quicker as flash media is faster

so only if you're low on RAM it will help i guess

[Swift_Monkey]

I could never get it working on my PC

1Gig of ram and a 1Gig Sandisk cruzer. Just came up that device was not fast enough,

[dissonation]

I'm using a 1GB thumb drive (none of my others were fast enough), only since yesterday though, so I'm not really sure if there's a difference yet. I shall return :)

[garryb]

ok noo i own an elctronic store and sell lots of mp3 players which can also be used as flash drives so ill give it a try. and let u no

[WelshBluebird]

I could never get it working on my PC

1Gig of ram and a 1Gig Sandisk cruzer. Just came up that device was not fast enough,

same here - except i was using my old Creative V200 512MB mp3 player.

I may give it a try with my parents MP3 players later, but I'm not expecting anything lol

[drotaru]

i have a muvo v200 creative 1gb ver and it works ( 1 gb ram )

flash only has acces time better that the hdd , however not the transfer rate , so if you have a file larger than 50 megs for example it's better to be on hdd than flash drive , vista adds the virtual mem from flash with the one from the hdd as a hole and then routs the big files to the hdd virtual ram and the small files to the flash drive virtual ram

[gdodson]

It requires very high speed flash drives. Anything that's hard-drive based won't work at all. Apparently the drive that Microsoft was using to test ReadyBoost was the Apacer Handy Steno HT203, which newegg no longer carries. It had a transfer speed of 200x. I've heard that you can make some other drives work, but Vista prefers the really fast 200x ones.

[Byron_Hinson]

I have been using a 3.8GB ReadyBoost cache from a USB stick since we started out review the other week. There is a difference when loading files such as Photoshop stuff etc, but its not massive. I tend to run our review machine with 2GB DDR2 800 RAM and the 3.8 GB ReadyBoost cache for the best performance.

[BigCheese]

Neither of my flash drives or any other removable drive I have is apparantly fast enough, so I just disabled the ReadyBoost service.

[BBinder]

i wanted to give it a whirl on my 256mb thumbdrive but it wasnt compatible, so hopefully friday i'll have my new thumb drive from buffalo with the 27mb read and 18mb write :) and i hope that works

http://www.buffalo-technology.com/products...p;categoryid=32 :)

[IceBreakerG]

I have a Lexar JumpLightning flash drive, and it works with ReadyBoost. On my laptop (I have 1.25GB of RAM), it works fine. Before I got the 1GB stick of memory, it definately made a difference in performance, with 1.25GB of memory, it still helps, just not quite as much. Its really intended for systems with lower amounts of memory. Once you get to 2GB, it'll still help, just not as noticeable since you have more system memory.

For everyone that thinks Vista is a memory hog, stop bitching. You have a lot of memory to use it right? Vista takes advantage of a significant amount of system memory to improve overall performance which is why you'll notice 50% or more of your memory being used on startup.

The ReadyBoost technology works, and works quite well. ExtremeTech did a review on ReadyBoost a few months ago. Check out the article, it'll at least give you an idea on what it does and how it works as well as a short list of some tested flash drives.

[Evolution]

fyi ReadyBoost has nothing to do with Virtual Memory or the Page file. All it does is load the "cache" of programs/services/etc. onto it for quick access.

[Timothy003]

I used 870 MB of my 1 GB Kingston USB flash drive on my PC that has 768 MB of RAM. It ran a hell of a lot smoother. Locking and switching users was much faster, and little apps like Firefox and Explorer didn't take five seconds to load.

Too bad it doesn't let me use Safely Remove Hardware anymore when ReadyBoost is running on the drive. It's even a pain in the neck to disable it (if it's even possible to)!

[null_]

Works fine with my 2GB flash drive, I have it enabled on a 512MB machine and it's MUCH better.

[dissonation]

As promised, I'm reporting back- There is a difference, esp with programs you use frequently- I would assume the 'super-prefetch' thing uses the storage on the ready boost compatible drive to store its cache. If so, It would take a while for it to learn your habits and be most effective.

[PR.]

I'm hoping when/if HP release updated SD drivers for the HP Tablet PC TC1100 I can use readyboost on the built in SD card reader, it runs pretty well anyway but any boost would be well received!

[:: Lyon ::]

But I guess if you have a 2 Gb RAM, then this won't matter?

[Randolph]

But I guess if you have a 2 Gb RAM, then this won't matter?

Exactly. ReadyBoost is for people under 1GB of ram.

[TommyRush]

Visual Studio opens much quicker on my machine with a 512 micro sd card even though I have 2 GBs of ram.