Using Windows ReadyBoost

This is an elaboration on what I have written before(Article post by Mikenamz, December 15, Fasten Up Your Vista Performance Now!!!). At first I was thinking of editing the present article, but after thinking through about it, i thought why not I make another article explaining on what and how to use the Windows ReadyBoost. Hope this will help the users on understanding this awesome feature.

The Windows ReadyBoost is one of the pros of Windows Vista. It enables you to plug a Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive or Secure Digital (SD) memory card into your computer and have Windows Vista have it as memory. This is a benefit for people who is using Vista and wants to improve their PC's memory resources and at the same time wants to reduce the cost needed to upgrade the memory of the PC(Machines upgrade can be difficult and costly, moreover, some machines have limited memory expansions capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM). Windows ReadyBoost allows Windows Vista to service normal disk 80 - 100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. In addition, there are some requirements for a device to be compatible to use the ReadyBoost option.

For a device to be compatible and useful it must conform to the following requirements:

• The capacity of the removable media must be at least 256 MB (250 after formatting)
• Devices larger than 4 GB will have only 4 GB used for ReadyBoost
• The device should have an access time of 1 ms or less
• The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device
• The device must have at least 235 MB of free space
• NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32 are supported (Windows 7 and Vista SP2 will support also the new exFAT filesystem)
• The initial release of ReadyBoost supports one device. The recommended amount of flash memory to use for Windows ReadyBoost acceleration is one to three times the amount of RAM installed in your computer.
  

It is easy to use Windows ReadyBoost. You just have to plug in the USB flash drive or SD memory card to your machine first. Then Windows will check if the performance of the device is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If the device is fast enough, you will be ask if you want to use the device to spped up our system. Here is a sample window picture of it.


If not, a window like below will appear.


So, in a nutshell, try this yourself and you'll see the benefits of ReadyBoost.

* The Windows ReadyBoost feature is included in Windows Vista edition Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate