# Windows Vista and ReadyBoost



## Semper Fidelis (Mar 20, 2007)

I found out about a feature I was unaware of yesterday. Windows Vista can use the memory of compatible flash thumb drives and extend your basic system media. When you plug in your thumb drive, you go to Properties -> ReadyBoost and can up your effective system memory which improves performance.

I'm running Vista on my business computer and it was a snap with my SanDisk drive - I added 950MB of memory! I imagine the faster the thumb drive the more the performance boost is.

Just thought I'd share this with any other geeks out there who aren't imprisoned in the MAC world.


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## VictorBravo (Mar 20, 2007)

SemperFideles said:


> Just thought I'd share this with any other geeks out there who aren't imprisoned in the MAC world.




 You made me laugh twice in 10 minutes. I'm going to have to go back to reading Owen before I blow my curmudgeonist persona.

That is really cool. BTW, we have a Mac too, it's imprisoned in the sewing room for misbehavior.


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## Staphlobob (Mar 21, 2007)

SemperFideles said:


> I'm running Vista on my business computer and it was a snap with my SanDisk drive - I added 950MB of memory! I imagine the faster the thumb drive the more the performance boost is.



Perhaps you have a better computer than I, or you are running a better version of Vista. But I tried the Basic Home version on my pc here (I've got 100g ram) and it caused untold headaches. In the end the only thing I could do to get rid of Vista was to completely reformat my hard drive and stay with XP. (I've since purchased an external hard drive and back up everything on there.) 

Glad you like it. Perhaps in the future, what with updates and improvements, I'll be able to return to it.


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## toddpedlar (Mar 21, 2007)

SemperFideles said:


> I found out about a feature I was unaware of yesterday. Windows Vista can use the memory of compatible flash thumb drives and extend your basic system media. When you plug in your thumb drive, you go to Properties -> ReadyBoost and can up your effective system memory which improves performance.
> 
> I'm running Vista on my business computer and it was a snap with my SanDisk drive - I added 950MB of memory! I imagine the faster the thumb drive the more the performance boost is.



Sounds like they've got an interesting idea, and not to poo-poo the concept too much, but I can't imagine that even with USB 2.0 you're getting sufficient throughput to make much difference. Squeezing data through that spigot is MUCH slower (about 8MB/s) than passing it along the bus to conventional RAM for any reasonable computer (of order GB/s). I'll just add an extra GB of RAM if I need it - cost isn't that much more.


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## toddpedlar (Mar 21, 2007)

Staphlobob said:


> Perhaps you have a better computer than I, or you are running a better version of Vista. But I tried the Basic Home version on my pc here (I've got 100g ram) and it caused untold headaches. In the end the only thing I could do to get rid of Vista was to completely reformat my hard drive and stay with XP. (I've since purchased an external hard drive and back up everything on there.)
> 
> Glad you like it. Perhaps in the future, what with updates and improvements, I'll be able to return to it.



You have 100 GB of RAM? You mean 100GB hard disk, right?


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 21, 2007)

toddpedlar said:


> Sounds like they've got an interesting idea, and not to poo-poo the concept too much, but I can't imagine that even with USB 2.0 you're getting sufficient throughput to make much difference. Squeezing data through that spigot is MUCH slower (about 8MB/s) than passing it along the bus to conventional RAM for any reasonable computer (of order GB/s). I'll just add an extra GB of RAM if I need it - cost isn't that much more.



Not true though because when the memory has to go to the pagefile on your hard drive for virtual memory it goes to memory that is about 10x slower in terms of access times. Search "Readyboost" on Google to see the performance enhancement.


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