Readyboost is amazing

[HGC]

I've had a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop for two years. It came with 512 Ram, and I upgraded to 2 GB (the max it'll take) immediately. It runs Vista Home Basic. Recently I added a Super Talent Pico Mini 4 GB USB drive and set it to Readyboost.

It's like getting a new laptop for $10. MS Office, internet, Windows Explorer all noticeably snappier.

I don't quite get it, as looking at Taskmanager I was not coming close to utilizing the 2 GB of system RAM.

I just wanted to share my joy!

 

[taltamir]

when running MS office or browser you have to read them from a slow slow laptop HDD.
Readyboost copies them to the thumb drive and runs it from it. Which has a noticeably faster read speed.

 

[HGC]

taltamir, office or IE read from the HD even if you have plenty of RAM? I thought that only happened if what you're running needs more RAM than is installed. Thanks for the input.

 

[Throckmorton]

I think when people say that you don't need Readyboost if you have X amount of RAM, they have no idea what they are talking about. RAM and Readyboost are two separate things.
I'm not sure how it works, and my research on the web has turned up no detailed explanation. But I think that commonly used small files are stored in Readyboost and stay there after the computer is shut down. That means when you start up Windows the OS reads some files stored on the flash drive. Having all the RAM in the world doesn't do the same thing, because that data was lost when the computer was last rebooted, so it has to reread them all from the HD.

 

[Throckmorton]

Can anyone explain exactly how Readyboost works? Does it really store files semi permanently, or does the OS have to read those files from the hard drive and stick them in RB again when you reboot?

 

[kranky]

There's a good explanation of how it works about 2/3 down the page at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...m-Windows-Vista-from-Windows-Vista-Inside-Out

 

[thefreeaccount]

I think when people say that you don't need Readyboost if you have X amount of RAM, they have no idea what they are talking about. RAM and Readyboost are two separate things. I'm not sure how it works, and my research on the web has turned up no detailed explanation. But I think that commonly used small files are stored in Readyboost and stay there after the computer is shut down.

If you have enough spare RAM, superfetch will load those commonly used small files into memory, which is a lot faster than your flash drive. If you don't have enough memory, they will go to your readyboost drive.

Generally, your readyboost cache is cleared and re-initalized whenever your PC is turned on or wakes up from sleep. Using the old cache to boot the OS would be a security risk because the OS can't tell whether your flash drive was removed from the PC and modified. If you use a built-in/non-removable flash drive such as Intel's "Turbo Memory", the readyboost cache will remain after shutdown and Windows will use it during the next boot. However, benchmarks have shown that even this has no significant effect on boot time, as long as you have 4GB of memory.

From the horse's mouth:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

"I'm the Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Client Performance group and own the ReadyBoost feature. I wanted to give some offical answers based on the excellent questions and discussions that I've seen in this blog, to date. Also, I'll be using this as a starting point for the official ReadyBoost FAQ. Overall, as many posters have pointed out, the feature is designed to improve small random I/O for people who lack the expansion slots, money, and or technical expertise to add additional RAM. As y’all know, adding RAM is still the best way to relieve memory pressure.

 

[vshah]

If you have enough spare RAM, superfetch will load those commonly used small files into memory, which is a lot faster than your flash drive. If you don't have enough memory, they will go to your readyboost drive.

Generally, your readyboost cache is cleared and re-initalized whenever your PC is turned on or wakes up from sleep. Using the old cache to boot the OS would be a security risk because the OS can't tell whether your flash drive was removed from the PC and modified. If you use a built-in/non-removable flash drive such as Intel's "Turbo Memory", the readyboost cache will remain after shutdown and Windows will use it during the next boot. However, benchmarks have shown that even this has no significant effect on boot time, as long as you have 4GB of memory.

From the horse's mouth:

fwiw i believe all readyboost content is aes 256 encrypted

 

[Throckmorton]

Then it sounds like Readyboost could do a lot more than it currently does. They say to set it to 1.5x your RAM. Well shoot, 6gb of flash memory takes a long time to fill up... then you reboot and it's all gone.

 

[Throckmorton]

Last night I put my laptop in standby mode, and when I started it up today it didn't erase the Readyboost file. In fact, it hasn't even been modified today. Yet the MS access LED has been flashing constantly, so I know Readyboost is being read from.

 

[Engineer]

Last night I put my laptop in standby mode, and when I started it up today it didn't erase the Readyboost file. In fact, it hasn't even been modified today. Yet the MS access LED has been flashing constantly, so I know Readyboost is being read from.

Can you tell a difference when using it?

 

[Throckmorton]

Can you tell a difference when using it?

No, but I haven't been paying attention. I should probably do some direct comparisons with it enabled/disabled.

BTW this is what I'm using, 30MB/sec Sandisk MS HG-Duo http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=448208

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Ready Boost is something that was awesome when Vista first came out as there were plenty of computer systems that had less than 2GB of RAM back then, especially in laptops that might have had only 1GB of RAM and dreadfully slow spinning HDDs.

Since then we've seen DDR2 and DDR3 hit rock bottom prices for 2GB sticks to the point where it almost seemed silly not to max out your ram slots. And of course there has been the steady stream of SSDs that are heads and tails faster in every way than the memory sticks intended to be used for ready boost...

 

[Throckmorton]

Ready Boost is something that was awesome when Vista first came out as there were plenty of computer systems that had less than 2GB of RAM back then, especially in laptops that might have had only 1GB of RAM and dreadfully slow spinning HDDs.

Since then we've seen DDR2 and DDR3 hit rock bottom prices for 2GB sticks to the point where it almost seemed silly not to max out your ram slots. And of course there has been the steady stream of SSDs that are heads and tails faster in every way than the memory sticks intended to be used for ready boost...

Everyone says that including MS, but I don't understand.

I have 4gb RAM, usually about 33% is used, and yet obviously the swap file and Readyboost are still being used. If I disable readyboost, that data would be cached in the swap file ONLY regardless of available RAM, and therefore would be slower to access.

Unless I'm missing something, RB is just adding another place to store some cache data that goes to the hard drive anyway, and that place happens to be flash memory with very little access time.

 

[Throckmorton]

It looks like Readyboost is much more effective on Win 7 http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2009/09/03/windows-7-readyboost-really-boosts/

 

[KDOG]

Cool thread. I've wondered how much ready boost would do....

 

[nOOky]

It's an older review on Vista, but still relevant

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed,1532.html

 

[Throckmorton]

I thought RB was the same in Vista and 7, the article I posted makes me think otherwise.

I've never used Vista but I notice people say it uses most of your RAM for superfetch. 7 isn't like that. On my desktop and laptop, with only a few small apps running, mem usage is at about 33% of 4GB. With Readyboost enabled on my memorystick, the access LED is constantly blinking, meaning that it is being used despite the free RAM.

 

[Emulex]

but readyboost would be slower than your x25-m? or you'd put readyboost on the ssd drive?

 

[Throckmorton]

I found a really fast flash drive on sale at Staples-- a 16 GB Sandisk Cruzer for $40
http://www.staples.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-16GB-USB-flash-drive/product-nr_785427?cmArea=SEARCH

HD Tune is showing about 23MB/sec read

 

[Emulex]

thats kinda slow can i see the random 4k write speed?

 

[Throckmorton]

No. I don't know how to erase a partition on a flash drive to test writes with HD Tune.

This isn't fast? Aren't flash drives usually like 3MB/s?

 

[Golgatha]

No. I don't know how to erase a partition on a flash drive to test writes with HD Tune.

This isn't fast? Aren't flash drives usually like 3MB/s?

Yes, that's reasonably fast for reads. My 3-4 year old dual-channel OCZ drive only gets around 20MB sustained read and it seems plenty fast.

 

[Eug]

I have a nettop with laptop drive, and 2 GB DDR2 800.

I'm thinking of just getting a cheap 8 GB Class 10 SD card for ReadyBoost. Good enough? I have a very fast Patriot Xporter XT Rage 16 GB USB pen drive, but I'd rather not use that for this purpose.

BTW, what happens when you want to download stuff off your camera SD card? Does removing the ReadyBoost SD card temporarily cause it to reset, forcing a reload of all the cached data?

 

[vshah]

also i don't think the % ram used takes into account that being used for superfetch. it is the % in use by active applications