FORCE slow USB drives work READYBOOST in vista

[Mahmood]

Windows ReadyBoost is a great technology, caching things on USB drives to improve system performance, but Windows Vista insists on checking the drives for certain speed requirements before enabling the feature. If you have a USB drive that is just a hair to slow to beat the test, or you want to use an external hard drive (slower speed, loads of cache space), Matt Rajca posts at Channel 9 how you can force Vista to let you use ReadyBoost on an unsupported device, whether it wants to or not :

1. Plug in the device.

2. Open the Readyboost tab on the device properties.

3. Select ?Do not retest this device?

4. Unplug the device

5. Open regedit (start->run->regedit)

6. Expand - HKLM (Local Machine)->SOFTWARE->Microsoft->Windows NT->CurrentVersion->EMDgmt

7. Find your device.

8. Change Device Status to 2

9. Change ReadSpeedKBs to 1000

10. Change WriteSpeedKBs to 1000

11. Plug in the device.

12. Enable Readyboost!!!!

[-Hiroshi-]

Interesting...-ponder- Too bad I only have a 256MB thumb disk. lol

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

As said in that thread, this isn't really a good idea, the idea of ReadyBoost is to speed windows up, using slow media isn't going to achieve that (the speed requirements are there for a reason).

[Ambroos]

Readyboost only makes sense if your readyboost drive is faster than your hard disk drive. If this is slower, it won't speed up your system, it will slow it down.

[azz0r_wugg]

False. Its still extra memory.

I have a gig in my laptop, I bought a 2gb flash drive thinking it would be fast enough, but its not. So I used this edit and now my system doesnt clog as often.

[+Ryster Subscriber²]

That may be false for you, not everyone. It depends where a person's bottleneck is. If the bottleneck is down to a lack of memory, then a slightly slower amount of extra memory will help. However if you already have lots of memory and want to speed up your system by preventing certain things being swapped to disk, then a slower usb device will not be for you and will actually slow your system down.

[azz0r_wugg]

More memory > Less memory.

Regardless of speed, and note that unlike putting slow ram where fast ram is already placed wont slow your system down this way (in terms of the USB stick + ram)

[Menge]

no man...

more SLOW memory < less FAST memory.

if your HD has a read speed of 10MB/s and the thumb drive 1MB/s, swapping to the HD is definetly faster :| that's OBVIOUS

[chrismaddern]

I would normally stear clear of arguments like these but:

-This could be an advantageous thing to do if you don't have enough system memory to run smoothly

-If however, Windows writes to the USB memory as opposed to the HD because it wants to reduce caching to the HD due to higher speed USB device, then having a low speed device in this place will cause system slowing, especially in program loading.

Chris

[haxaco]

what would be the speed of your normal usb 2.0 flash drive or even an ipod compared to the speed of a stand alone hard drive (non raid) ?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

The idea is that flash drives are faster than hard drives, so storing a page file on a flash device will be faster than storing it on your HD, but if your thumb drive is slower than your HD, all you're doing is slowing the paging down (i would assume Windows will store it on the faster device, regardless of what kind it is)

[Ambroos]

Well vista has a strange kind of memory management.

I first installed vista on 415MB Ram (yes setup allows), and vista always used around 280MB (physical) ram

Now i have 512MB Ram (just added some, no other hardware or software change) and vista suddenly always uses 380MB Ram.

Vista just places as much files in the Physical ram as possible. If you launch a program parts of the kernel system will be moved to the paging file to make space for your own programmes. This feature has a name but i forgot it :D

[Athernar]

The operative word is Slow here, i am sure microsoft have it disabled for a reason.

[Spooky]

Theres an eaisier way then the registry hack (which I just saw posted over at Vista Bable also, you must be getting around some). Anyway, theres an eaisier way:

How to actually determine if your USB device will work with ReadyBoost and how to make it work if it will - even if Vista told you other wise.

[Spooky]

Theres an eaisier way then the registry hack (which I just saw posted over at Vista Bable also, you must be getting around some). Anyway, theres an eaisier way:

How to actually determine if your USB device will work with ReadyBoost and how to make it work if it will - even if Vista told you other wise.

[Spooky]

Theres an eaisier way then the registry hack (which I just saw posted over at Vista Bable also, you must be getting around some). Anyway, theres an eaisier way:

How to actually determine if your USB device will work with ReadyBoost and how to make it work if it will - even if Vista told you other wise.

[scooterman]

ready boost is made for small chunks of data 4k 8k flash memory is faster at reading little random chunks than a harddrive is. its about 2500kb/s random read and 1750kb/s random write you need for it to work.

this has a lot of info about it

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/20.../02/615199.aspx

[Spooky]

In the registry hack, specifically;

"9. Change ReadSpeedKBs to 1000

10. Change WriteSpeedKBs to 1000"

It doesn't do any good to change those settings at all because the flash device is still only going to do what it can do regardless of those settings in the registry. In fact, for some devices and mother boards altering those registry settings will actually cause a flash device to to use USB 1.1 instead of USB 2.0, Vista will actually give you a warning about this if you set them too low.

Edited December 31, 2006 by Spooky

[NoneAvail]

Arghhh, That digg video ReadyBoostVideo got me all hyped up... I am about to reinstall Vista all over again.

Is there such a thing for XP?

Edited December 31, 2006 by XDViPeR

[Spooky]

ReadyBoost isn't really going to do anything for you if your installed RAm is already 1GB or more, at least you will not see much improvement. Where you really see inprovement is qith less than 1GB of RAM. Some say 1.5GB RAM (even MS said that), but in reality the difference starts to decrease at 1 GB.

Arghhh, That digg video ReadyBoostVideo got me all hyped up... I am about to reinstall Vista all over again.

Is there such a thing for XP?

[Gibwar]

ReadyBoost isn't really going to do anything for you if your installed RAm is already 1GB or more, at least you will not see much improvement. Where you really see inprovement is qith less than 1GB of RAM. Some say 1.5GB RAM (even MS said that), but in reality the difference starts to decrease at 1 GB.

I can vouch for that, my laptop has a SD card reader built in, and believe it or not my 1GB SD card was ReadyBoost capable. My laptop originally had 512MB of RAM, and ReadyBoost helped a ton and I could see the light of the card flashing a lot as it used it. I recently upgraded to 2GB of RAM for my laptop, use the same cache on the SD card, and it hardly uses it anymore. So I agree with that, over 1GB it isn't all that useful (I don't use it in my desktop, which has 4GB of RAM)

[swgiant]

thanks for your tricks and i tested it. Results on applying ReadyBoost on slow flash drive is terrible. I have 1.24GB RAM, test with kingston Datatraveler 2GB, its reading KB/S is 4350 and Writing speed is 1569. After applying, the windows itself quite lagging, literally slow response and seems like 512MB RAM only, oh hell speed i got from my thumb drive. end up disable it and let it free from ReadyBoost...

[blade1269]

hey,

noob question is the 1000 in hexadecimal or decimal, claity please

[Vistas2006]

no man...

more SLOW memory < less FAST memory.

if your HD has a read speed of 10MB/s and the thumb drive 1MB/s, swapping to the HD is definetly faster :| that's OBVIOUS

Couldn't agree more :yes:

[ToneKnee]

I can't get it to work, even though I've edited the registry, the drive won't function as a ReadyBoost device. :(

It keeps switching back to 'Do not use this device.' :(