Windows Vista Speed Boost - Using a USB Drive

Do you have a USB flash drive laying around? Speed up your Windows Vista with the ReadyBoost feature. It allows you to use that spare space on a USB stick reduce wait time when using Vista.

Basically Windows ReadyBoost allows Vista to use a compatible USB flash drive as cache instead of the hard drive. Microsoft suggests that you provide enough space on a flash drive for ReadyBoost so that you are in at least a 1:1 ratio with your installed physical RAM. So if you have 1Gig of Ram installed, would be best ot have a 1Gig USB drive, or at minimum 512Meg free of space on it.

Without getting too picky if you have a really old USB drive, see if you can find out the specs for it, it is recommended that the USB drive you have be at least:
  • 5 MB/sec throughput for random 4k reads across the entire device
  • 3 MB/sec throughput for random 512k writes across the entire device

    • Here are some suggestions on compatible Readyboost Flash drives

    Steps to enabling ReadyBoost
    1. Insert the USB drive into one of your computer's USB ports. The AutoPlay dialog box opens a few seconds after plugging the drive in asking you what you want to do. Click "Speed up my system".

    2. A new screen will appear showing the ReadyBoost properties. Select the "Use This Device" option. Then use the slider labeled "Space to reserve for system speed" to reserve the amount of space you would like to assign to ReadyBoost. Use 100% of the USB sticks space if you can.
    3. Click on the Apply and then the OK buttons to finalize the changes. The USB flash drive is now reserved as your ReadyBoost device and will be used as additional cache memory. Just remember to keep the USB stick plugged into the USB port on your PC when it boots up so Vista can detect and use it. You should notice a significant speed boost since accessing the flash drive is faster than accessing the hard drive.

    Note: You can verify that ReadBoost was setup on the USB Stick by opening the drive. You will see a file called ReadyBoost and it will have a file type description of ReadyBoost Cache File. The size of the file will also be the same as what you allocated towards ReadyBoost.

    Also keep in mind that you can only have one active ReadyBoost usb drive per system.

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    Written by PCWizKid on April 11th, 2008 with no comments.
    Read more articles on Contributors and Microsoft Windows Vista and ReadyBoost and pcwizkid.

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