Looking for opinions on Windows ReadyBoost(tm)

[BMW]

I have Windows 7 running on a HP 6730b laptop with 2GB RAM.

What are everyone's opinions on it? Does ReadyBoost actually work?

Would it be beneficial for me with 2GB RAM?

[Yoda]

I tried ReadyBoost on Windows7 but didn't mention a dramatic speedup. It requires a flash drive constantly installed to the system, so it isn't as comfortable as could be. Fortunately I have SD card reader on my netbook which is rarely used and I dedicated it solely to ReadyBoost technology. Butttt... it seems that this technology is raw yet, Windows sometimes reported that the ReadyBoost file is corrupt, so I needed to re-create it several times. At last I removed it and forgot about ReadyBoost for a long time. It seems that MS tries to invent a crutch for badly designed OS.

[AJ]

Hi,

I used readyboost for a bit on Vista and it did seem to make an improvement (although difficult to tell how much of this was psychological). It doesn't improve things nearly as much as installing more RAM, though.

Cheers,
Adam

[AbstractYouShudNow]

ReadyBoost should not even have deserved any attention...
Did they really think that a flash drive would be a better option than the hard drive for a virtual addressing cache file ?
Well, I think that's no because :

• 1. Adding another area requires the system to determine in which area is located the page, so it adds extra complexity to the virtual memory manager, which most likely incurs a loss of performance.
• 2. Flash drives (or all types of drives that ReadyBoost allows to use) are most often SLOWER than the hard drive, and need to be plugged in when using it. I wonder what happens when ReadyBoost is used on an USB key and said key is removed during system execution. Is the cache lost ? or does it keep a copy of them on the hard drive, thus making ReadyBoost completely useless

[Yoda]

Did they really think that a flash drive would be a better option than the hard drive for a virtual addressing cache file ?

It is not used for virtual memory cache. And MS doesn't think that it is faster.
The idea is that flash drives doesn't need to perform "seek" operations and Windows stores there a bunch of common used libraries otherwise scattered throughout the whole disk.

[BMW]

ReadyBoost should not even have deserved any attention...
Did they really think that a flash drive would be a better option than the hard drive for a virtual addressing cache file ?
Well, I think that's no because :

• 1. Adding another area requires the system to determine in which area is located the page, so it adds extra complexity to the virtual memory manager, which most likely incurs a loss of performance.
• 2. Flash drives (or all types of drives that ReadyBoost allows to use) are most often SLOWER than the hard drive, and need to be plugged in when using it. I wonder what happens when ReadyBoost is used on an USB key and said key is removed during system execution. Is the cache lost ? or does it keep a copy of them on the hard drive, thus making ReadyBoost completely useless

If you whip the flash drive out, it doesn't matter as it stores data on the hard drive as well. However, this does not make ReadyBoost useless IMO, because if there is some data that is accessed frequently, the system can load it from the flash drive, which would be faster than the hard drive (provided the data is not too large, in which case a hard drive load may be faster).

[bluemoon]

Get a cheap SSD for boot partition, problem solved.

[Kazinsal]

You'd be much better off buying another 2GB DDR2 SODIMM and shoving that in there.

[Mikemk]

Did they really think that a flash drive would be a better option than the hard drive for a virtual addressing cache file ?

No, but it's a terrific marketing ploy since most users don't know about the cache file, and think that they are limited to their ram.

I wonder what happens when ReadyBoost is used on an USB key and said key is removed during system execution. Is the cache lost ? or does it keep a copy of them on the hard drive, thus making ReadyBoost completely useless

Windows Vista usually bluescreens, 7 typically becomes buggy, and 8 does something different every time.

[AbstractYouShudNow]

So they keep in the Windows spirit