ReadyBoost Discussion

  • Thread starter Thread starter Yoshi
  • Start date Start date
I first discovered ReadyBoost in these very newsgroups... It would be
nice if MS mentioned the fact that its a feature somewhere in the help or
welcome center.

Anyway, I decided to experiment. I had a 1 GB trans-flash card stuck in
my cell phone not doing much, so I stuck it in it's card reader to see what
would happen. Awesomely (yes I know thats not a word but it works here ;) )
Vista (RC1) immediately popped up an autoplay box and asked if I wanted to
use it with ReadyBoost. I said yes, and after nudging up how much of the
card to use, started watching to see if I noticed any improvement in
performance.

I've noticed several things. First, Vista seems to thrash my hard disk
less which is always good. For awhile before I tried RB I was getting real
annoyed that Vista was constantly accessing my drive even with my 1.5 gigs
of ram. That stopped now that I have the RB drive and for that alone I
consider it worth it.

The next thing I noticed is that several programs I use (Dreamweaver 8,
Gimp 2.2, Open Office) now run much smoother. Prior to RB I could
sometimes see small hesitations while I was running them and they were
actively processing a file. These have dissappeared.

The final thing I've experienced with RB was less than wonderful. My
father's computer crashed and I needed to move some recovery programs over
to fix things. I figured I'd use my stick/reader combo. I disabled
readyboost and went to transfer my programs over, and lo and behold my card
was now only capable of holding about 20 megs of data. I searched the card
and found no traces of the RB cache file or any other. I even checked with
ZAR and found no files. Finally I had to completely reformat the card before
I could get back my missing space. This will be REALLY annoying if I have
to repeat it every time I want to use the card for anything but RB.

Except for the one problem I'd have to say my experience with RB has been
quite positive.

Raff Conrad
 
RB has perf counters, you can see how well its working.

Also, when I did tests, I looked at the disk queue length of my main drives,
they were lower during my tests with RB.

Steve
 
For those of you discussing this, it would be useful to indicate how much
physical memory you have, I think.

Clint
 
I apologize, I did mention it but it was kind of buried in my post.

I have 1.5 gigabytes of DDR2 ram. 3 512MB sticks, 2 of which are running in
dual channel mode together.

My Ready Boost configuration offers me 970 MB.
 
I attempted to do so, but even with the memory used lowered, Vista could not
detect any additional free space on the flash. It's almost as if Vista is
storing what the setting is somewhere and not changing it to reflect changes
in the ReadyBoost settings.

Maybe this is an issue with trans-flash cards when using ReadyBoost?
 
I did see it in yours, but some others did not post it. I'm curious if it
makes a difference. The one link I posted indicated that the amount of
memory may not make as much difference as I might have otherwise thought.

Clint
 
I have a message titled "Suggestions for ReadyBoost stability?" in the
Performance and Maintenence Group where I describe the problem of the
ReadyBoost cache file disappearing at random times. When it has been working,
I've been quite happy with the performance. My HDD is quite loud on access so
I can tell the difference that way and it is clear that it is going to the
disk less when loading large apps.

My latest theory on my problem: The Ipod Service that iTunes installs. I
just disabled it and -- knock on wood -- it is has been up steadily since.
Just a theory though...
 
Sony VAIO PCV-RX860 with 512 RAM. I've been using my camera's 1gig
SecureDigital card for ReadyBoost while at work. It seems to speed
application launch a bit, and to smooth out switch-between and operations in
applications when I get a bunch of them open.
 
CoreyH said:
I have a message titled "Suggestions for ReadyBoost stability?" in the
Performance and Maintenence Group where I describe the problem of the
ReadyBoost cache file disappearing at random times. When it has been working,
I've been quite happy with the performance. My HDD is quite loud on access so
I can tell the difference that way and it is clear that it is going to the
disk less when loading large apps.

My latest theory on my problem: The Ipod Service that iTunes installs. I
just disabled it and -- knock on wood -- it is has been up steadily since.
Just a theory though...

:
Click to expand...
when I load itunes software it knocks out both of my optical drives-CD &
DVD burners.
Frank
 
I have mixed feelings with Readyboost so far. I had a spare 512mb PNY stick
lying around so I decided to try it since my 1GB Corsair flash drive is
incompatible. I would like to keep the PNY plugged in to the back of my
tower all the time since I don't need it but if I shut down, restart, or
hibernate the PC the thumb drive becomes unreadable. The only solution is to
eject it and then reinsert it and the readyboost file appears again.
Otherwise the file doesn't appear at all and it shows no space left on the
drive. Hopefully it's just an RC1 bug that will be gone eventually but I do
notice a slight difference in performance on application launches and I have
1GB of system RAM installed.

Just my two cents...
 
I have 2 gig of ram and usb cruzer micro 1 gig with 960 avaliable for
Readyboost
My Itunes works fine but can't see video with the usb stick in the sistem.
As soon as I remove it , Itunes video works fine.
Gess is a bug that will be fixed in Itunes.
 
Well I am running windows vista rc2 , build 5744 with two gigs of ram (2 X 1
gig) and as a whole it seems alright, apart from one program.

Sometimes when trying to run ashampoo burning studio 6.3 the program will
not start properly and as such I have switched it off (the readyboost).

FYI: using a sony microvault tiny 2 gig flash drive for the readyboost

NIK
 
reformat the flash driver then it works

Rafferty Conrad said:
I attempted to do so, but even with the memory used lowered, Vista could not
detect any additional free space on the flash. It's almost as if Vista is
storing what the setting is somewhere and not changing it to reflect changes
in the ReadyBoost settings.

Maybe this is an issue with trans-flash cards when using ReadyBoost?
Click to expand...
 
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