What is Windows ReadyBoost and does it improve performance?

I had an old 2GB Crucial flash drive that I didn't use anymore just laying around. Its nothing special, just a common jump drive that operates at a normal speed. Plug it in and open up your device manager. Under disk drives, right click your jump drive and click properties. In the box that pops up, click the Policies tab and select Optimize for Performance. Then apply and ok. Close out of device manager. Open My Computer and right click, hit properties. Click the Readyboost tab. Set the amount you wish to allocate, then apply it and ok it.

When my laptop starts to be sluggish and starts accessing the hard drive alot, I just plug in my jump drive. My laptop takes a moment to transfer data from the hard drive and put it on the jump drive. The nice thing is your only have to set up ReadyBoost once.

I am AWARE that ReadyBoost Drives get better performance! They have higher levels of cache and better transfer speeds (read and write). But insted of buying a ReadyBoost drive, just use that old jump drive that you don't use.

Upgrade your RAM to 2g. Amazing!!!!

Not really, but you have to be aware of the fact that most facilities built directly into the motherboard may utilise a proportion of CPU resource which will not be reported by OS tools. Depending on the type and cost of motherboard, this will affect USB and firewire ports. Another example of this is Intel Matrix RAID, which will utilise the CPU for all XOR calculations where this is required for RAID levels excluding any combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1
Depending on the age of the computer and the complexity of the OS and Software, this can become quite pronounced.

I would strongly recommend that anyone wanting better performance should look to upgrade internal memory to the maximum capacity/performance supported by the motherboard/OS.

Avoid using onboard adapters where performance is keenly required, the improvements sought from increasing memory may be muted by a drop in CPU performance.

Opt to add dedicated expansion cards or Cardbus/ExpressCard adapter with suitable ports. Such cards will have their own processor to support the new resources. Use the new USB ports for external drives and memory sticks.

Be aware of the memory limitations of 32bit OS - You may reach the point where adding extra memory is actually pointless - since the memory cannot be effectively used.

Repartition the main disk to create discrete sections - I recommend a minimum of 3 sections 1> (C Operating System and Software, 2> (? Page/Hibernation File partition [optionally relocate to another disk], 3> Non Application Specific and Personal Data. There seems to be a stigma against partitioning, however the benefits are significant, You only need to backup and defrag drive C: when adding or removing software and occasionally thereafter. You do not need to touch the Page/Hibernation Partition, this by isolation is Fragmentation Free and should be sited in or near the middle of the disk to minimise any impact from spanning. You can backup the Data partition religously and defrag as needed if your data is substantial. The boon here is the backup media can be sized for the partition being backed up, the backup will take less time. You can use furthur partitions if you want to split up your data, or if you have multiple users on one computer.

Opt to replace the standard HD with an SSD (Can be quite expensive but performance will improve drastically) - or alternatively and subject to space inside the computer.

Opt to add a smaller cheaper SSD as a dedicated drive large enough to accomodate a substantial Page File and optionally a Hibernation File.

For laptops or computers with limited space inside that are unable to accomodate additional disks inside the case, opt to buy an eSATA adapter and connect an external HD or SSD to the computer.

Since SSD's are in principal the same technolgy as memory sticks but are designed to run at the highest possible speeds, SSD's will be much faster than hard disks and may also be marginally faster than memory sticks, especially when connected to PATA/SATA ports instead of USB.

I've been using it for some time. It runs better with a 4GB Ready boost USB then a 2GB USB. I use it exclusively for virtual memory. I also have it integrated into the drive system. After this is done it should not be removed.

What I would like to do is remove all the virtual memory from my hard drive and run it on my Ready Boost USB instead. This chip to chip connection would be much faster and reduce the heat created by my hard drive. Virtual memory runs continuously so theoretically this might make the drive last longer. A note here.....USB chips can ware out and fail, keep this in mind when using Ready Boost especially when using it for virtual memory.

Please explain the logic behind boosting performance by adding another process to run?

From my Commodore 64 days to today a machines speed has always been dictated by its slowest peripheral. If that be the CPU then so be it.

I'm running Vista Home Premium on a Toshiba Satellite, it's a little over a month old. So, I don't have a lot cluttering up the 160GB HD, have not been able to put anything big enough into 2GB RAM to appreciably affect performance. In fact, IMHO the thing is to cotten-picken fast! I'm thinking of putting the drive from my crashed HP laptop in this machine, it has WinXP booted on it. See if I can slow this beast down.

I upgraded My P4 2.4ghz Pc with 768meg of ram from XP Pro to Vista ultimate. I was sorry I did. Everything was crawling I waited forver to open email, run music/videos on media player. Just exploring my c and d drives were painful. I heard about Ready boost, so I pugged in a 1 gig flash drive and configured it to be used as ready boost device. I can say I saw a major improvement. I'm still using it today. Ready boost does improve performance but it does not replace upgrading your hardware or buidling\buying a new PC.
I recently built a Pc with an E8400 processor, 4 gig of ram, Nvidia 8800gs video card. Windows Vista Ultimate now flies. As you click it runs. Cally of Duty4 looks like a movie

As always,many have posted great tips.So I will post my personal experience with ReadyBoost.My laptop is a modest HP Pavillion dv6000 with AMD TK-55,1 GB RAM and shared graphics.Mind you I don't use it to do any intensive work with it.However it seems anytime I need to do some quick photo editing or edit documents, I end up using it.After reading about RB on MS's site, I opted to try using a 2GB SD card I hadn't been using(a regular "blue" card not a high speed).I inserted it in the built in card reader,set it to be used as a RB card and saw immediate improvement.Wanting to push it,I went into systempropertiesperformance and reduced the size of the paging file to only 16MB.What a difference! Mind you there are better ways to improve performance(see tips,RAM is cheap),but if your working on the laptop causes you to run out of RAM and constantly need virtual RAM,using an RB capable flash drive or card will be cheap,simple,and productive.

I was once extremely interested in ReadyBoost. Here is my story. My school gave me a laptop in 2005, a then IBM (now Lenovo) T43. It has a 1.86 gigahertz processor and came with a "whopping" 512 mb of RAM. With XP, it ran just fine. Then Vista came along. Being a selfproclaimd M$FT fanboy I snapped up our schools deal to get it on our computers. Yes. I got Windows Vista Ultimate on a computer with a graphics card that couldn't run Aero and a 1.86 gigahertz processor. I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM, while other got 1.5. I got some more oomf, but after a bit I realized that Vista was just too heavy. So I asked around about ReadyBoost. Turns out, my crappy processor was at its max handling 2GB. When I borrowed a 1GB flash drive, there was no boost in performance. So, make sure your processor is able to handle that much RAM. Also, the USB drive is extremely inefficient in providing RAM, so you are better of just buying another gig card.

I use ReadyBoost on my Media Center computer, and it makes a significant difference in how quickly my music, video, and DVD library information loads and displays in Media Center. Plus, it's easier to stick a USB drive in the back of the computer and leave it there. I don't use ReadyBoost on my laptop because I don't usually have a free USB port, and I think it's ridiculous to have to attach and remove a USB drive every time I use the laptop.

I have been using Vista with and without readyboost for about a year now, some observations:

When I first used Readyboost I had a 512M USB Drive and it seemed to boost the speed of both boot up and programs. After installing SP1 and upgrading to a larger 2G USB Drive the programs did not seem to be faster and boot up seemed slower! Am not sure if it was SP1 or the larger drive, I kink of think the larger drive. Also, there are lots of differences in the USB drives as to speed of file access so my suggestion is to use a smaller drive for Readyboost and see if it helps or not. It really will be a crap shoot as it depends on the drive and its size...good luck.

My question is this: instead of going throughthe serial communication between a USB port and a USB memory device, why not buy a solid state flash memory that plugs right into the IDE/ATA controller on the motherboard? Would that work better and faster? Look at this device: Transcend 4GB IDE Flash Module, part number TS4GDOM40V. Your opinion is welcome... thx, Alex

Now i tell u how to increase u r pc's total performance.
generally many people increase their pc speed by format pc,defragment hdd,& many other.but it works few days becoz when we install programms in our system then pc's speed r slowly in down position becoz many programms r run in behind.
So if u increase u r pc's speed install Advanced Windows Care Personal & Iobit defragment software & forget the pc's rubbish slow speed. The AWC may cure u r all problems such protect u r pc against spyware & adware,delete junk files,delete the unwanted registry & many other in one click.
SO install it & forget problems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!