Ready Boost compatiable drives.

[Luke Fitzwater]

I've recently tried to get Ready Boost working on a few of my USB flash
drives to no avail. Apparently there is a speed and size requirement to
the drives that Vista will use. After three different model drives I
thought I would post and ask the community what they were using, and
hope to expand a bigger list to the public.

For those who don't know what Ready Boost is, it is a fast cache file
for Vista by using an USB flash drive which in turns speeds up Vista by
10%-15% typically.

To use Ready Boost, just plug any USB flash drive or any digital camera
media with an USB adapter with a capacity greater than 256MB (formatted)
into your Vista box. On the Autorun box click on the option to speed up
Vista with this drive. The recommended size of your flash drive should
be anywhere from an 1:1 to 1:2.5 ratio to your current amount of RAM.
Even tho this speeds up a machine, please do not use this as a
replacement for more RAM.

I am just wanting to start a thread to see who has used Ready Boost and
what brand and model USB flash drive or media you were using as well as
if it worked and if there was any noticeable difference in the Vista
experience. If your drive did not work, please include reason why it
failed if it met the size requirement of 256MB formatted. Please also
try not to duplicate drives/media that are already on the list. I will
begin the list with two of the three that I have tried.

PNY, "Attache", 256MB, unknown read/write speed (too small, formatted 244MB)

A-Data, PD8 "My Flash", 1GB, 18MBps read 13MBps write (not fast enough
random read/writes)

-Luke

 

[Zapper]

I am using a PNY Attache 4GB drive- works fine. Vista seems "snappier" Huge
difference when playing Oblivion. Before the ReadyBoost, I would get VERY
stuttery sound when roaming outside the cities. With ReadyBoost I do not
have those anymore, my guess it was caused by loading data from the hard
drives. I have 2GB Ram in my machine, and have a 3830 MB SuperFetch Cache.

My Lexar SD reader is not fast enough with a Generic 1GB SD card, nor with
my 2GB Kingston Pro SD card.

The rest of the ReadyBoost info that I have been able to find on the web is
at Tom Archers Blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

One of the Services you need to make sure is running is:External Memory
Devices Managment Services...I had disabled it due to reading a tweak guide

 

[Guest]

Lexar "Sport" 512MB working as it should with ReadyBoost.

 

[Luke Fitzwater]

I guess there is very little interest in the community about speeding
their computer up by using Ready Boost.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I am interested but am presently more concerned with tracking down issues in
Vista that puzzle me. It's more a matter of time and focus. I have a Sony
8GB Vault flash drive that should work well (I have 4GB of ram), but I just
don't seem to get around to moving files off it so I can check out
ReadyBoost.

 

[Travis King]

I plugged my 512MB Sandisk Cruzer Mini into my USB 2.0 port and it says that
it's not capable of running ReadyBoost. It must not be fast enough I guess.

 

[Zapper]

Make sure it is in a USB 2 port, if it is, then tell it to retest. If that
does not work, then eject and reinstall it a few times.
The Cruzers have worked for others though some people have had to plug and
unplug them a couple of times

 

[Zapper]

You have an 8GB FLASH drive?? That would rock. The largest flash drives I
have seen are 4GB, and the larger ones they have at Frys are hard
drives...which would probably not qualify for ReadyBoost..

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It was not cheap but I just had to be the first kid on my virtual block to
have one.

16, 32, and 64 GB flash drives are on the way according to Buslink.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

btw, it is big enough that I can move whole virtual machines around with it.
This would be great for trainers. They would only need a small library of
flash drives with vm's installed preset for standard presentations and VPC
installed on the laptop. Time for lesson 2? Just grab the right flash
drive. No need to copy the vm to the laptop's hard drive.

 

[Zapper]

Yep, those would have come in handy...we used the VST firewire drives to
have multiple drive images. Our laptops had firewire ports or cards..

The first time our Bus Dev manager went to MSFT to demo...they could not
find a SINGLE machine with Firewire support in the lab!!!! We then started
looking into DVD/USB drives...

 

[Luke Fitzwater]

I've found one that works, finally.

Ativa 1GB U3 Smart drive.

Its available exclusively by Office Depot. I have noticed somewhat of a
speed increase, but I will still increase my ram from 1GB to 2GB on this
old thing by the time rc1 comes out.

-Luke